5 


GIFT  OF 


THE  CENTENARY 

of 

ALPHA  OF  NEW  YORK 

of 

PHI  BETA  KAPPA 


Celebrated  at  Union  College 
June  11  and  12,  1917 


The   Gazette  Press,   Schenectady,  N.   Y. 
november.  1917 


^A 


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QM 


m 


uy 


THE  CENTENARY 

of 

ALPHA  OF  NEW  YORK 

of  ^^^ 

PHI  BETA  KAPPA       ^^^/ 


Celebrated  at  Union  College,  June  11  and  12,  1917 

Alpha  of  New  York  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  commemorated 
the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  institution  of  the  Alpha 
during  the  past  commencement  of  Union  College.  Public 
exercises  were  held  on  Monday  afternoon,  June  11,  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  chapel  of  Union  follege  and  members  of  the 
Alpha,  with  their  guests,  dined  at  the  Mohawk  Club,  Sche- 
nectady, on  Tuesday  evening,  June  12.  Dr.  Alexander 
Duane,  '78,  president  of  Alpha  of  New  York,  presided  a*t 
both  meetings.  The  following  delegates  represented  some 
of  the  chapters  in  the  State  of  New  York :  Gordon  R.  Fonda, 
Beta  of  New  York  at  New  York  University;  Charles  Sears 
Baldwin,  Delta  of  New  York  at  Columbia  University ;  F.  L. 
S.  Shepardson,  Eta  of  New  York  at  Colgate  University ;  H. 
C.  Hasbrouck,  Theta  of  New  York  at  Cornell  University; 
John  R.  Slater,  Iota  of  New  York  at  Rochester  University ; 
Miss  Ellen  Van  Slyke,  Mu  of  New  York  at  Vassar  College. 
Professor  Edwin  A.  Grosvenor  of  Amherst  College,  president 
of  the  United  Chapters  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  was  the  guest 
of  honor.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Oscar  M.  Voorhees,  secretary, 
represented  the  United  Chapters  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa.     The 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

eldest  member  of  Alpha  of  New  York  present  was  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Alfred  P.  Botsford  of  Woodbury,  N.  J.,  who  was  grad- 
uated from  Union  College  seventy  years  ago  with  the  class 
of  1847.  By  his  courtliness  and  his  geniality  he  contributed 
much  to  the  pleasure  of  the  occasion.  The  members  of  the 
committee  on  arrangements  were  John  Ira  Bennett,  '90, 
Professor  Morton  Collins  Stewart  and  Professor  Frank  Cos 
Barnes.  They  were  greatly  assisted  by  Dr.  Alexander 
Duane,  president  of  Alpha  of  New  York,  and  by  Mr.  Louis 
Oppenheim,  '75,  who  collected  most  of  the  fund  sought  to 
defray  expenses.  Alpha  is  grateful  to  many  members,  who 
contributed  generously,  and  specially  grateful  to  Mr.  Court- 
land  V.  Anable,  '81,  who  was  the  principal  contributor. 

Following  is  a  report  of  the 

PUBLIC  EXERCISES 

Dr.  Alexander  Duane  :  Members  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa, 
ladies  and  gentlemen  assembled: 

I  greet  you  all  here  at  this  centennial.  It  is  a  notable  an- 
niversary. We  are  met  to  celebrate  the  centennial  of  the 
foundation  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  Union  College.  We  cele- 
brate it  amid  the  clash  of  arms,  and  when  the  energies  and 
the  thoughts  of  all  are  directed  in  preparation  for  the  great- 
est struggle  that  this  country  has  ever  engaged  in,  a  struggle 
against  foes  without,  and  against  traitors  and  misled  fanat- 
ics within. 

It  may  seem  strange  that  amid  these  compelling  circum- 
stances that  engage  our  energies  and  our  attention  we  should 
turn  aside  to  celebrate  an  occasion  like  this.  But  it  is  not 
strange;  there  is  no  anomaly  in  it.  Phi  Beta  Kappa  itself 
was  born  in  the  midst  of  war.  It  was  born  when  the  nation 
was  struggling  for  the  very  right  to  live.  Its  founders  were 
no  cloistered  students ;  they  were  no  mere  dreamers,  but 
men  of  action.  They  were  scholars  to  be  sure.  They  were 
selected  for  their  intellect.     But  their  scholarship  and  their 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

intellect  were  directed  to  the  benefit  of  their  country  and 
for  the  advancement  of  freedom.  Then,  as  now,  the  spirit 
of  democracy  was  in  the  air,  urging  men  all  over  the  world 
to  combat  the  forces  that  sought  to  enslave  the  world.  That 
spirit  pervaded  the  men  that  founded  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  and 
it  is  evident  from  their  utterances  and  from  their  actions 
that  that  was  the  spirit  which  the  society  they  founded  was 
designed  to  promulgate. 

Witness  the  charter  that  was  issued  to  Harvard  two 
years  after  the  society  was  founded,  which  begins  in  this 
wise:  "Whereas,  it  is  repugnant  to  the  liberal  principles 
of  societies  that  they  be  confined  to  any  place,  men,  or  de- 
scription of  men,  and  the  same  should  be  extended  to  the 
wise  and  virtuous  of  every  degree,  and  of  every  country." 
Brave  words  those  for  a  period  like  that  in  which  caste  and 
prejudice  reigned. 

Nine  men  assembled  to  form  at  the  College  of  William 
and  Mary  December  5,  1776,  the  Societas  Philosophica,  indi- 
cated by  the  letters  Phi  Beta  Kappa^  corresponding  to  the 
Greek  ^^(piXoffocpia  piov  Hvpepvrfrriiy^^  which  our  distin- 
guished president.  Professor  Grosvenor,  has  aptly  inter- 
preted "the  love  of  wisdom  is  the  guide  of  life."  It  is  not,  you 
observe,  the  love  of  knowledge,  nor  the  pursuit  of  it  that  is 
the  basic  principle  of  this  society.  It  is  the  love  of  wisdom, 
of  knowledge  applied  to  right  uses  and  to  the  service  of  man. 
Surely  a  motto  and  a  guide  worthy  of  all  admiration — a 
motto  as  inspiring  and  a  guide  as  sure  to  us  in  these  grim 
days  as  they  were  to  those  brave  lads  in  the  even  darker 
days  of  1776. 

It  would  be  worth  while,  I  think,  to  consider  for  a  moment 
the  character  of  the  men  and  the  character  of  the  society 
that  they  established  at  William  and  Mary.  The  men 
themselves  were  of  the  highest  character,  and  of  much  more 
than  the  usual  ability.  Of  the  fifty  men  that  constituted  the 
society  of  William  and  Mary  before  its  extinction  in  1781 

3 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

there  were  many  that  were(  distinguished  afterwards  as 
soldiers,  jurists,  statesmen,  and  in  other  capacities.  It  would 
be  hard  to  find  in  any  similar  group  a  collective  record  that 
was  more  brilliant. 

Again,  the  society  that  they  founded  was  in  all  essential 
respects  the  prototype  of  the  Greek  letter  fraternity  of  to- 
day. It  was  secret;  it  was  profoundly  secret.  Moreover, 
at  William  and  Mary  it  was  extended  to  all  classes  in  that 
college,  and  the  members  held  frequent  meetings  during  the 
college  year.  Finally,  they  insisted  not  merely  upon  scholar- 
ship, nor  even  character,  but  also  on  friendship  as  constitut- 
ing the  basic  principles  of  the  society. 

In  1779  the  Chapter  determined  to  form  subsidiary  or- 
ganizations, although  their  manner  of  forming  them  seems 
peculiar.  They  did  not  at  first  undertake  to  form  chapters, 
or  branches,  as  they  called  them,  in  other  colleges,  but  in 
other  towns  in  Virginia,  and  designated  these  chapters  as 
Beta,  Gamma,  Delta,  and  so  on.  Whether  this  was  actually 
done  or  not  does  not  appear,  but  it  furnished  a  precedent 
that  was  extremely  important,  inasmuch  as  it  was  the  actual 
salvation  of  the  society.  For  at  that  time  at  William  and 
Mary  there  was  a  young  man  named  Elisha  Parmelee,  who 
had  been  at  both  Harvard  and  Yale,  but  who  had  come  South 
for  his  health  and  had  taken  up  his  studies  at  William  and 
Mary.  Observing  this  move  to  form  new  chapters,  he  sug- 
gested that  branches  be  formed  not  simply  in  Virginia,  but 
also  in  the  neighboring  states.  Acting  on  his  suggestion  the 
society  determined,  and  he  was  commissioned,  to  form  chap- 
ters at  Yale  and  Harvard  called  respectively  the  Alpha  of 
Connecticut  and  the  Alpha  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  These 
were  established  respectively  in  1780  and  1781.  In  all 
essential  regards  they  were  like  the  parent  chapter,  except 
that  almost  from  the  beginning  the  membership  in  them  was 
confined  to  the  senior  class,  with  a  few  from  the  junior  class. 

This  step,  namely,  the  establishment  of  these  branches  at 

4 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

Harvard  and  Yale,  was  extremely  fortunate  because  im- 
mediately afterward  the  parent  chapter  at  William  and 
Mary  was  extinguished  b}^  Arnold's  invasion  of  Virginia; 
the  College  of  William  and  Mary  was  burned  down  and  the 
chapter,  perforce,  closed.  The  few  students  who  were  left 
in  college  confided  their  archives  under  seal  to  the  college 
authorities  with  the  confident  expectation  that,  as  they  said, 
the  chapter  would  "arise  again  to  life  everlasting  and 
glory  immortal."  And  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  seventy 
years  later  the  chapter  was  re-established  and  re-established 
by  the  sanction  of  one  of  the  original  members  who  was  still 
living. 

A  few  years  later  a  chapter  was  established  at  Dartmouth, 
forming  the  Alpha  of  New  Hampshire,  and  in  1817  the  fifth 
chapter  in  the  order  of  establishment  was  formed  at  this 
college.  Of  the  course  of  this  chapter  I  will  not  speak.  Pro- 
fessor Bennett  will  tell  you  something  of  that  later.  But  it 
may  be  said  that  there  are  some  misconceptions  regarding 
the  formation  which  have  led  to  erroneous  beliefs  regarding 
the  policy  pursued  here.  Because  the  charter  was  confided 
in  the  beginning  to  graduates,  not  to  undergraduates,  and 
because  Union  proceeded  to  take  in  a  large  number  of 
honorary  members,  it  was  supposed  that  Union  was  the 
pioneer  in  the  changes  that  were  beginning  to  take  place  in 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  itself,  a  transformation,  that  is,  from  an 
undergraduate  secret  society  into  a  graduate,  practically 
non-secret  fraternity.  That  view  seems  to  be  erroneous.  At 
Union,  at  all  events,  the  proceedings  were  secret  and  re- 
mained so  almost  up  to  the  present  time,  and  for  many  years 
the  chapter  proceeded  on  the  lines  of  an  undergraduate  or- 
ganization, frequent  meetings  being  held  during  the  college 
year. 

There  was  one  thing  that  the  establishment  of  a  chapter 
at  Union  did  do,  a  very  important  thing  in  American  college 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

life.  I  think  there  is  no  question  at  all  but  that  the  establish- 
ment of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  here  in  1817  gave  the  impetus  that 
resulted  in  the  formation  in  1825  and  1827  of  the  triad  of 
Greek  letter  fraternities,  Kappa  Alpha,  Sigma  Phi  and 
Delta  Phi  at  Union. 

These  fraternities  were  in  some  respects — in  externals,  at 
all  events — modeled  after  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  But  that  they 
did  not  regard  Phi  Beta  Kappa  as  in  any  sense  a  rival  was 
shown  by  the  fact  that  members  of  all  of  them  became  mem- 
bers of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  although  the  three  societies  them- 
selves were  at  bitter  odds.  It  does  seem  likely  that  the 
reminiscences  of  the  earlier  days  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  of  the 
society  as  it  existed  at  William  and  Mary,  an  undergraduate 
secret  society  that  laid  peculiar  emphasis  on  friendship, 
gave  the  impetus  to  the  formation  of  these  societies  at  Union, 
similarly  constituted. 

Up  to  1845  all  the  chapters  so  far  constituted  had  been 
Alphas ;  that  is,  each  had  been  the  original  and  sole  chapter 
in  that  state  in  which  it  was  formed.  Thus  the  Alpha  of 
Rhode  Island  was  formed  at  Brown,  and  the  Alpha  of 
Maine  at  Bowdoin,  and  so  forth. 

In  1845  Yale  exercised  a  privilege  that  William  and  Mary 
exercised  in  the  beginning,  that  of  forming  subordinate  chap- 
ters in  the  same  state,  establishing  one  at  Trinity  and 
another  at  Wesleyan.  This  example  was  followed  by  other 
Alphas,  and  Union,  in  particular,  established  in  succession 
chapters  at  New  York  University,  the  College  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  Columbia,  Hamilton,  Hobart,  Colgate  and 
Cornell. 

In  1881  at  the  centennial  of  the  formation  of  the  Harvard 
chapter  Harvard  invited  the  different  chapters  to  meet  in 
convention,  and  at  this  convention  a  new  policy  was  in- 
augurated. Forthwith  Phi  Beta  Kappa  from  a  loose  con- 
federation of  distinct  groups  of  state  societies,  each  group 
under  its  state  head  or  Alpha,  became  a  national  fraternity 

6 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

under  a  national  organization,  governed  as  it  is  now  by  a 
Council,  a  President  and  a  Senate,  the  Council  meeting 
triennially  and  the  President  and  the  Senate  acting  ad 
interim  as  a  governing  body. 

The  Council  now  has  the  sole  power  of  granting  charters, 
and  that  privilege  is  exercised  with  very  great  care,  so  that 
admission  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa  is  a  considerable  honor;  I 
mean  the  admission  of  any  college  to  a  charter  of  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  is  a  considerable  honor  given  rather  grudgingly  and 
only  after  a  period  of  considerable  waiting.  There  are  now 
eighty-nine  chapters,  all  in  strong  institutions  and  all  under 
this  common  head. 

So  we  see  in  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  as  it  stands  to-day,  a  de- 
velopment in  four  stages:  First,  the  formation  of  a  little 
local  undergraduate  secret  society  at  the  College  of  William 
and  Mary,  conforming  in  all  regards  to  the  college  f raternitj' 
of  to-day;  second,  an  extension  to  other  colleges,  this  stage 
differing  from  the  first  only  in  the  fact  that  the  membership 
was  now  restricted  to  members  of  the  senior  class,  or  at 
most  to  some  members  of  the  junior  class;  third,  the  state 
in  which  more  and  more  the  fraternity  assumed  the  character 
of  a  graduate  organization,  and  of  an  honor  to  be  conferred 
at  or  about  commencement;  and  lastly,  the  development  of 
the  society  into  a  great  national  organization  of  chapters 
working  to  a  common  purpose  and  acting  under  a  single 
head. 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  is  thus  now  a  great  and  powerful  organi- 
zation, comprising  many  chapters  and  many  thousands  of 
members.  Shall  not  this  society,  whose  basic  principle  was 
the  spirit  of  democracy  and  the  love  of  wisdom,  a  society 
founded  in  the  very  midst  of  our  Revolution  and  in  the  very 
birth  year  of  our  Republic,  a  society  that  comprises  the 
best  intellect  of  the  best  colleges  in  the  land,  shall  not  this 
society,  I  say,  do  now  its  part  in  the  struggle  in  which  we 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

are  engaged  and  act  to  its  utmost  in  the  cause  of  freedom, 
which  the  United  States  has  so  bravely  taken  up? 
(Applause.) 

Dr.  Alexander  Duane^     I  call  on  Professor  John  Ira 
Bennett  to  give  us  a  resume   of  the  History  of 
THE  ALPHA  OF  NEW  YORK 

Professor  Bennett:  The  Alpha  of  New  York  of  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  was  instituted  on  the  first  day  of 
May,  1817,  by  the  concurring  resolutions  of  the  Alphas  of 
Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  and  New  Hampshire.  A  charter, 
signed  and  sealed  by  the  president,  the  vice-president  and 
the  corresponding  secretary  of  the  Alpha  of  Connecticut  was 
on  that  day  transmitted,  with  a  preamble  and  constitution, 
to  the  Honorable  Chancellor  Kent  of  Albany,  the  Reverend 
John  Chester  of  Albany  and  the  Reverend  Andrew  Yates 
of  Schenectady.  The  charter  incorporated  and  established 
the  gentlemen  designated,  with  such  others  as  they  might  as- 
sociate with  themselves  in  conformity  with  the  laws  of  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa,  into  a  separate  and  distinct  branch  of  the 
society  to  be  known  and  called  by  the  name  of  "The  Alpha 
of  New  York";  and  it  granted  them  and  their  successors 
all  the  powers  and  privileges  and  benefits  thereunto  apper- 
taining in  as  full  and  ample  a  manner  as  the  brethren  of 
Connecticut,  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  enjoyed 
the  same. 

By  virtue  of  the  power  vested  in  them  the  Honorable 
James  Kent,  LL.  D.,  Chancellor  of  the  State  of  New  York, 
the  Reverend  Andrew  Yates,  S.  T.  D.,  a  professor  in  Union 
College,  and  the  Reverend  John  Chester,  A.  M.,  minister  of 
the  Presbyterian  Church  in  Albany,  met  at  the  house  of 
Chancellor  Kent  in  Albany  in  July,  1817,  (the  day  not  re- 
corded) and  proceeded  to  the  business  assigned  to  them  by 
the  Alphas  of  Yale,  Harvard  and  Dartmouth.  At  that 
time  they  elected  twelve  gentlemen  to  share  the  initial  mem- 

8 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

bership  with  them,  among  them  the  Reverend  Doctor 
Eliphalet  Nott,  president  of  Union  College,  and  Thomas  C. 
Brownell,  A.  M.,  then  a  professor  in  Union  College,  from 
which  he  was  graduated  in  1804,  and  later  president  of 
Washington  (now  Trinity)  College  and  Bishop  of  Connecti- 
cut. At  an  adjourned  meeting,  held  in  Schenectady  on  July 
22,  thirteen  members  were  elected  from  the  senior  class  of 
Union  College.  On  July  24  twelve  members  were  elected 
from  the  distinguished  class  of  1818,  among  them  Sidney 
Breese,  George  Washington  Doane  and  Alonzo  Potter.  At 
other  meetings  the  organization  of  the  Alpha  was  completed 
by  the  initiation  of  members  elect,  the  election  of  officers,  the 
adoption  of  by-laws,  the  election  of  honorary  members  and 
the  drafting  of  a  form  of  initiation. 

The  form  of  initiation  was  adopted  on  August  9,  1817. 
It  contains  a  pledge  of  secrecy,  prescribes  as  the  purposes 
of  the  society  the  encouraging  of  friendship,  morality  and 
literature,  and  lays  emphasis  upon  the  fraternal  relation  be- 
tween the  members.  The  New  York  Alpha  still  uses  this 
form  as  an  interesting  reminder  of  the  past.  The  classic 
section,  which  makes  solemnity  difficult,  is  the  final  address 
by  the  president,  who  says :  "Gentlemen  of  the  Society :  You 
participate  with  me  the  pleasure  which  I  feel  at  this  addition 
to  our  family.  I  therefore  present  to  you  our  new  Brethren 
for  congratulation."  But  this,  like  other  things  quaint, 
may  be  made  charming  by  dignity.  A  scholiast,  by  the  way, 
unacquainted  with  a  once  common  use  of  the  verb  "partici- 
pate," has  interpolated  an  "in"  after  "with  me." 

In  the  by-laws  and  proceedings  were  some  enactments 
concerning  manners,  customs  and  decorum.  On  August  17, 
1817,  for  instance,  a  law  was  passed  forbidding  any  member 
to  "use  intemperate  or  abusive  language  in  the  meeting." 
Intemperate  and  abusive  language  has  since  been  infrequent 
in  the  meeting,  being  reserved  for  great  and  passionate  oc- 
casions.    On  July  24,  1817,  it  was  "Resolved,  that  it  be  a 

9 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

standing  order  of  this  Society,  that  all  persons  who  are 
engaged  in  its  public  exhibitions,  and  the  presiding  officer, 
shall  always  appear  in  a  gown  and  with  the  badges  of  the 
Society."  On  July  25,  1820,  it  was  "resolved,  that  the 
treasurer  be  authorized  to  procure  a  toga  for  the  use  of  the 
orator  of  the  Society." 

Under  the  constitution  transmitted  by  the  Alpha  of 
Connecticut  and  the  by-laws  subsequently  adopted  activity 
was  contemplated  as  a  literary  society  holding  monthly 
meetings  through  the  college  year  and  an  annual  exhibition 
on  the  afternoon  preceding  commencement  to  be  addressed 
by  an  invited  orator.  The  Alpha  of  New  York  so  began  and 
so  continued  for  many  years.  The  literary  exercises  pre- 
scribed by  the  constitution  were  written  debate,  extemporane- 
ous debate,  and  declamation.  These  were  performed  with 
varying  assiduity.  The  subjects  discussed  were  in  general 
those  of  current  interest — apolitical,  moral,  theological, 
literary,  educational  and  scientific — ^with  a  sprinkling  of  the 
favorites  of  many  generations  of  youth.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  that  on  March  18,  1820,  William  H.  Seward,  then  a 
senior  in  Union  College,  debated  on  the  negative  and  losing 
side  of  the  question,  "Ought  the  Territory  of  Missouri  to  be 
admitted  into  the  Union  without  the  proposed  restriction?" 
The  question,  "Are  caucus  nominations  by  representatives 
consistent  with  the  liberties  of  a  free  people?"  proposed  at 
the  meeting  of  May  8,  1824,  never  arrived  at  discussion. 
This  question  seems  to  be  before  the  house  at  the  present 
moment  of  time. 

It  does  not  appear  that  the  Alpha  of  New  York  as  an 
undergraduate  literary  society  ever  met  with  favor  equal 
to  that  accorded  to  the  other  more  inclusive  literary  socie- 
ties of  Union  College,  one  of  which,  the  Philomathean  So- 
ciety, was,  or  rather  is,  older  than  the  college  itself.  The 
most  active  interest  was  the  election  of  members,  conducted, 
seemingly,  without  much  interference  from  faculty  or  other 

10 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

graduate  members;  contention  waxed  warm  at  times  and 
meetings  were  adjourned  "after  repeated  ballotings  without 
result."  The  election  of  members  from  the  junior  class  in 
July,  1838,  was  referred  by  resolution  to  the  faculty.  Sev- 
eral fruitless  attempts  the  following  year  to  elect  members 
from  the  junior  class  were  the  last  ones;  and  they  appear 
also  to  have  been  the  end  of  the  activity  of  the  Alpha  of 
New  York  as  an  undergraduate  society.  Doubtless  the  rise 
and  rapid  growth  at  Union  College  of  secret  fraternities, 
which  added  congeniality  to  scholarship  as  prerequisite  to 
membership,  contributed  to  this  result.  It  is  worth  while  to 
note  in  passing  that  the  original  members  of  the  three 
venerable  fraternities  at  Union  College,  from  which  all  others 
are  more  or  less  directly  descended,  in  nearly  ever  instance 
were  or  became  members  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  and  two 
lionored  societies  of  scholars  at  Union — one  of  them  no 
longer  extant — borrowed  suggestions  for  their  symbols 
obviously  from  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa. 

A  noteworthy  undertaking  of  the  Alpha  of  New  York  was 
an  attempt  made  in  1833  to  organize  all  the  members  of  the 
Alpha  in  three  divisions,  a  physical  or  scientific  class,  a 
literary  class,  and  a  civil  class,  for  purposes  of  research  and 
scholarly  achievement.  This  organization  was  effected  and 
led  to  good  results  for  a  time ;  some  excellent  papers,  chiefly 
scientific,  were  contributed  by  members  and  published  under 
the  auspices  of  the  society. 

With  rare  intermissions  orators  addressed  the  society  at 
the  annual  meeting  appointed  for  the  purpose  from  the  be- 
ginning until  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  was  superseded 
by  the  address  of  the  honorary  chancellor  of  Union  Uni- 
versity. Distinguished  among  the  orators  were  DeWitt 
Clinton  (1823),  Eliphalet  Nott  (1824),  the  Right  Reverend 
Alonzo  Potter  (1839  and  1847),  William  H.  Seward  (1843), 
Charles  Sumner  (1848),  Tayler  Lewis  (1849),  and  John  T. 
Hoffman  (1875);  the  last  but  not  the  least  of  them  was 

11 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

the  Reverend  Doctor  George  Alexander,  who  spoke  in  1882 
in  memory  of  Tayler  Lewis.  Poets  proved  to  be  a  shy  race ; 
many  were  called  but  few  chose  to  come,  and  none  of  great 
eminence. 

Union  was  among  the  first  of  American  colleges — prob- 
ably, in  fact,  the  first — to  relax  the  rigidity  of  the  classical 
course ;  a  more  modern  alternative  to  that  course  was  offered 
from  the  founding  of  the  college  in  1795,  a  scientific  course 
was  established  in  1828,  and  a  course  in  engineering  was 
established  in  1845.  Prior  to  1854  no  express  discrimination 
lay  against  any  course  in  determining  eligibility  to  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  but  in  that  year  it  was  voted  that  election  to  the 
society  be  restricted  to  those  whom  the  faculty  deemed  en- 
titled to  Latin  diplomas  as  classical  students.  Since  then 
the  Alpha  of  New^  York  has  continued  to  be  a  classical  so- 
ciety. Recent  proposals  of  a  less  restricted  rule  of  eligibility 
have  not  hitherto  met  with  favor,  the  Sigma  Xi  scientific 
society,  much  esteemed  by  those  who  are  members  of  it,  being 
regarded  as  complementary  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  the  ade- 
quate recognition  of  scholarly  distinction.  The  two  socie- 
ties hold  a  joint  annual  meeting  at  which  an  address  is  made. 

For  many  years  prior  to  the  organization  of  the  Grand 
Chapter  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  1883  Alphas  were  vested 
with  full  powers  to  establish  chapters  within  their  respective 
states.  The  Beta  of  New  York  at  New  York  University 
(1858),  the  Gamma  of  New  York  at  the  College  of  the  City 
of  New  York  (1867),  the  Delta  of  New  York  at  Columbia 
University  (1869),  the  Epsilon  of  New  York  at  Hamilton 
College  (1870),  the  Zeta  of  New  York  at  Hobart  College 
(1871),  the  Eta  of  New  York  at  Madison  (now  Colgate) 
University  (1878),  and  the  Theta  of  New  York  at  Cornell 
University  (1882)  all  received  their  charters  from  the  Alpha 
of  New  York  and  by  it  were  installed.  The  rights  of  Alphas 
were  not,  however,  undisputed  and  several  minutes  of  the 
Alpha  of  New  York  show  how  the  desire  for  closer  federation 

12 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

grew  up.  Indeed  the  question  of  local  privilege  was  raised 
early  in  the  history  of  Alpha  of  New  York  and  recurred  at 
intervals  until  a  federal  union  of  the  society  was  formed.  At 
the  meeting  held  on  July  23,  1828,  the  following  resolutions 
were  adopted:  "Whereas  the  Alpha  of  Massachusetts  has 
communicated  to  this  Alpha  a  copy  of  a  new  code  of  laws 
which  they  have  adopted  and  which,  in  the  opinion  of  this 
Alpha,  embraces  some  new  principles,  therefore  resolved  that 
the  corresponding  secretary  be  directed  to  write  to  the 
corresponding  secretary  of  the  Alpha  of  Massachusetts  in- 
quiring how  far  it  is  deemed  by  them  competent  for  one 
Alpha  without  the  concurrence  of  the  others  to  amend  or 
alter  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  So- 
ciety. Also  resolved  that  a  committee  be  appointed  to  draft 
and  report  a  constitution  which  shall  embrace  only  the 
general  principles  of  this  association."  At  a  meeting  held 
on  July  23,  1839,  a  communication  from  the  Alpha  of  New 
Hampshire  was  read,  and  another  from  the  Alpha  of  Rhode 
Island,  "enquiring  whether  it  was  the  custom  for  one  Alpha 
to  grant  charters  to  new  branches."  At  the  meeting  held 
on  July  22,  1846,  it  was  resolved  that  a  committee,  to  which 
a  revision  of  the  by-laws  and  constitution  had  been  referred, 
have  power  to  confer  with  the  other  Alphas  in  regard  to  a 
convention  for  bringing  about  a  uniformity  in  the  constitu- 
tions. At  a  meeting  held  on  July  6,  1847,  this  preamble 
and  resolution  was  proposed:  "Whereas  a  petition  from 
Amherst  College,  Massachusetts,  has  been  presented  to  this 
Alpha  praying  its  assent  to  the  establishment  of  a  Beta  in 
that  college,  the  high  respectability  of  which  would  amply 
justify  this  Alpha  in  granting  their  assent  were  it  not  for 
the  previous  existence  of  an  Alpha  at  Harvard  University 
in  that  state,  and  whereas  it  has  been  heretofore  considered 
inexpedient  to  establish  two  branches  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
in  the  same  state,  therefore  be  it  resolved  that  if  the  Alpha 
of   Massachusetts,   whose   privileges   are   most  immediately 

13 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

concerned,  shall  approve  of  the  establishment  of  a  Beta  at 
Amherst,  in  that  case,  upon  due  notification,  the  Alpha  of 
New  York  will  give  their  full  and  free  consent  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  said  Beta  at  Amherst."  This  resolution  was 
adopted  July  28,  1847.  The  chapter  at  Amherst  was  estab- 
lished in  1853.  At  a  meeting  held  on  July  26,  1853,  the 
corresponding  secretary  reported  that  he  had  written  to  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  Harvard,  Yale  and  Dartmouth  "express- 
ing it  as  the  sense  of  this  chapter  that  the  practice  of  cer- 
tain colleges  in  forming  chapters  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Society  without  first  obtaining  the  consent  of  all  the  other 
chapters  is  in  violation  of  the  constitution  and  cannot  but 
have  an  injurious  effect  upon  the  standing  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  Society."  Two  Alphas  had  recently  been  established 
seemingly  without  general  sanction.  The  Alpha  of  Connecti- 
cut replied  to  the  corresponding  secretary  concurring  in  the 
view  of  the  Alpha  of  New  York.  At  a  special  meeting  held 
on  April  3,  1858,  the  following  resolution  wa^  passed: 
"Whereas  the  last  annual  meeting  resolved  that  the  request 
of  the  New  York  University  for  the  establishment  of  a  Beta 
in  that  institution  be  agreed  to  if  the  consent  of  the  other 
Alphas  be  obtained,  and  whereas  the  Alpha  of  Massachusetts 
and  the  Beta  of  Connecticut  write  that  they  think  the  con- 
sent of  the  Alpha  of  New  York  alone  sufficient,  and  the 
New  York  University  has  therefore  renewed  their  application 
to  this  society,  therefore  resolved  that  the  resident  members 
assembled  at  this  special  meeting,  while  they  individually  ap- 
prove of  the  institution  of  a  Beta  in  the  New  York  Uni- 
versity, do  not  feel  authorized  to  anticipate  the  action  of 
the  next  general  meeting  by  changing  the  conditional  ap- 
proval of  the  last  general  meeting  of  Alpha  of  New  York 
into  an  unconditional  one."  At  the  same  meeting  a  com- 
munication from  the  Amherst  chapter  was  presented  suggest- 
ing the  propriety  of  a  general  convention  of  the  branches  of 
the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  for  the  purpose  of  forming  a 

14 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

more  compact  organization  and  requesting  the  consent  of 
the  New  York  Alpha  to  such  a  step  and  the  appointment  of 
a  delegate.  Approval  was  given  and  a  delegate  was  ap- 
pointed. The  convention,  if  held,  cannot  have  agreed  to  a 
new  plan  for  establishing  chapters,  and  the  proper  mode 
of  establishing  them  continued  in  debate.  Alpha  of  New 
York,  which  had  contended  so  strongly  for  a  different  prac- 
tice, instituted  seven  chapters  in  the  State  of  New  York,  as 
has  been  related,  beginning  with  Beta  at  New  York  Uni- 
versity in  1858  and  ending  with  Theta  at  Cornell  University 
in  1882.  In  September  of  the  following  year  (1883)  the 
organization  of  a  Grand  Chapter,  known  as  the  United 
Chapters  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  was  effected.  This  Grand 
Chapter  was  given  full  control  of  the  establishment  of  chap- 
ters, which  it  has  exercised  cautiously;  and  it  has  since  ac- 
quired large  powers  over  all  the  general  concerns  of  the  so- 
ciety. John  A.  DeRemer,  Alpha  of  New  York,  1857,  was 
prominent  in  the  confederation  of  the  society  and  as  presi- 
dent of  the  United  Chapters  from  1898  until  his  death  in 
1907  he  took  a  leading  part  in  constructing  the  policy  of 
Phi    Beta  Kappa. 

A  few  various  notes  compiled  from  the  minute  books  of 
Alpha  of  New  York  may  be  of  general  interest. 

On  July  27,  1824,  "the  Society  [i.  e.,  the  Alpha  of  New 
York]  concurred  in  the  institution  of  an  Alpha  at  Bowdoin 
College,  Brunswick,  Maine."  On  July  27,  1825,  it  was  "re- 
solved that  the  badge  of  the  Society  be  altered  by  the  addi- 
tion of  another  star."  This  star  was,  of  course,  to  represent 
the  new  Alpha  of  Maine,  instituted  in  1825.  The  badge  in- 
herited by  Alpha  of  New  York  had  three  stars  on  it,  sup- 
posed to  signify  the  three  then  existing  Alphas  of  Connecti- 
cut, Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  A  fourth  star  was 
therefore  added  to  signify  the  Alpha  of  New  York.  Stars 
continued  to  be  added  to  signify  new  Alphas  when  instituted. 
Not  long  since  the  original  records  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  the 

15 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

College  of  William  and  Mary  were  recovered.  From  these 
it  was  learned  that  the  three  stars  had  been  on  the  badge 
at  the  beginning  and  signified  the  three  foundations  of  the 
society,  friendship,  morality  and  literature.  On  the  standard 
key,  recently  adopted  by  the  United  Chapters,  the  three 
original  stars  are  restored. 

On  July  26,  1825,  an  invitation  to  attend  the  anniversary 
address  of  the  Pi  Beta  Phi  society  was  accepted.  It  would 
be  interesting  to  know  what  the  Pi  Beta  Phi  society  was, 
and  how,  if  at  all,  it  was  related  to  later  fraternities  at 
Union;  it  antedated  Kappa  Alpha,  the  oldest  fraternity  ex- 
cepting Phi  Beta  Kappa  that  has  had  a  continuous  existence. 
Kappa  Alpha  was  founded  in  the  autumn  of  1825.  Nor  is 
this  minute  the  only  evidence  of  the  existence  at  Union  of 
other  fraternities  before  the  famous  triad.  Kappa  Alpha, 
Sigma  Phi  and  Delta  Phi. 

On  October  20,  1827,  it  was  voted  "that  the  attending 
members  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  attend  the  funeral 
of  their  late  brother  E.  B.  Fisk  as  pallbearers  *  *  *,  also 
to  wear  crape  on  their  hats  for  the  space  of  thirty  days  as 
a  token  of  respect  for  the  deceased."  On  February  13,  1828, 
the  society  voted  to  attend  the  funeral  of  Governor  Clinton 
in  the  usual  badges  of  mourning  and  to  continue  to  wear  the 
same  through  the  college  session.  Governor  Clinton  was  an 
honorary  member  of  Alpha  of  New  York.  These  minutes 
are  quoted  as  reminders  that  the  Alpha  of  New  York  had, 
in  its  early  years,  something  of  the  character  of  present  day 
fraternities. 

The  society  adjourned  its  session  of  July  21,  1840,  to  at- 
tend the  first  annual  meeting  of  the  Senate  of  Union  College. 
This  Senate,  which  had  a  life  of  many  years,  was  an  under- 
graduate body  organized  and  conducted  after  the  manner  of 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  It  had  a  part,  and  not  a 
slight  one,  in  training  former  generations  of  Union's  sons 
for  public  life,  in  which  they  were  eminent. 

16 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

At  the  meeting  held  on  July  21,  1863,  a  committee  was 
appointed  to  confer  with  the  New  England  chapters  on  the 
subject  of  lessening  the  number  of  members  to  secure  greater 
care  of  selection;  Alpha  of  New  York  has  generally  been 
careful.  ] 

Alpha  of  New  York  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  holds  three  meet- 
ings yearly,  besides  the  joint  annual  meeting  with  Sigma  Xi: 
a  meeting  on  the  second  Saturday  afternoon  in  February  for 
the  election  of  members  from  the  senior  class,  a  meeting  on 
the  evening  of  the  same  day,  or  an  evening  soon  following, 
at  which  candidates  are  initiated  with  form  and  ceremony, 
and  a  meeting  on  Monday  of  commencement  week  for  social 
reunion  and  for  the  transaction  of  business.  At  the  com- 
mencement meeting  nominations  for  honorary  membership 
may  be  made.  These  must  lie  over  one  year  and  are  re- 
ferred to  a  membership  committee  for  investigation.  This 
rule,  with  some  intermissions,  has  been  in  force  since  1821. 
The  election  of  honorary  members,  because  of  occasional 
abuses,  has  grown  increasingly  difficult.  For  many  years 
the  New  York  Alpha  used  its  privilege  of  such  election  freely. 
The  borrowed  finery  was  generally  of  the  best,  and  the  elec- 
tion of  men  of  note  lent  lustre  to  the  Society  and  imparted 
interest.  Many  of  those  chosen,  however,  were  either  gradu- 
ates of  Union  College  of  years  prior  to  the  institution  of  the 
Alpha  of  New  York  or  distinguished  graduates  of  colleges 
in  which  no  chapter  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  existed.  It  should 
be  borne  in  mind  that  no  Beta  chapter  was  established  until 
that  at  Trinity  in  1845,  which  was  the  eighth  chapter 
ordinally  though  but  seven  were  actually  existing,  the  chap- 
ter at  William  and  Mary  having  long  since  ceased  to  be.  As 
late  as  1858  there  were  only  fourteen  chapters,  mostly 
Alphas.  This  condition  no  longer  obtains;  but  a  discreet 
choice  of  honorary  members  is  still  desirable. 

In  the  winter  of  1913  two  members  of  Alpha  of  New  York 
were  discussing  ways  and  means  of  increasing  the  activity 

17 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

and  profitableness  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  the  capital  district. 
They  decided  to  try  to  found  a  graduate  association  and 
imparted  their  plan  to  Alpha  of  New  York  which  appointed 
the  committee  that  arranged  for  the  meeting  and  dinner, 
held  at  the  Hotel  Ten  Eyck,  Albany,^  February  28,  1914,  at 
which  the  Upper  Hudson  Association  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
was  formally  organized  and  instituted.  The  association  has 
grown  and  prospered.  It  holds  three  meetings  a  year,  a 
winter  meeting  in  Albany  on  the  last  Saturday  in  February, 
a  spring  meeting  at  Union  College  on  the  third  Saturday 
in  May,  and  an  autumn  meeting  in  Troy  on  the  last  Saturday 
in  November. 

The  honor  roll  of  Alpha  of  New  York,  not  to  mention  the 
living  or  graduates  of  colleges  other  than  Union  elected  to 
membership,  includes  the  names  of  the  following  illustrious 
members:  John  W.  Taylor,  1803,  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Representatives ;  the  Rt.  Rev.  Thomas  C.  Brownell,  1804, 
first  President  of  Washington  (now  Trinity)  College  and 
Bishop  of  Connecticut;  John  C.  Spencer,  1806,  statesman. 
Secretary  of  War  and  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  of  the 
United  States ;  Francis  Wayland,  1813,  scholar,  philosopher, 
President  of  Brown  University ;  Richard  M.  Blatchford, 
1815,  diplomat;  John  McLean,  1815,  President  of  the  Col- 
lege of  New  Jersey  (now  Princeton  University)  ;  Nathaniel 
P.  Talmadge,  1815,  Governor  of  Wisconsin;  Sidney  Breese, 
1818,  jurist.  United  States  Senator,  Chief  Justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Illinois ;  the  Rt.  Rev.  George  Washington 
Doane,  1818,  Bishop  of  New  Jersey,  founder  and  first  presi- 
dent of  Burlington  College,  orator,  poet,  prophet,  author  of 
"Softly  now  the  Light  of  Day,"  "Fling  out  the  Banner," 
"Thou  Art  the  Way"  and  other  Christian  hymns;  the  Rt. 
Rev.  Alonzo  Potter,  1818,  Vice-President  of  Union  College, 
Bishop  of  Pennsylvania;  Laurens  Perseus  Hickok,  1820, 
philosopher,  President  of  Union  College ;  Tayler  Lewis,  1820, 
scholar,  author;  William  Henry  Seward,  1820,  statesman; 

18 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

John  W.  Nevin,  1821,  President  of  Franklin  and  Marshall 
College,  theologian ;  Ira  Harris,  1824,  Senator  of  the  United 
States;  Henry  Philip  Tappan,  1825,  President  and  author 
of  the  greatness  of  Michigan  University;  the  Rt.  Rev. 
Horatio  Potter,  1826,  Bishop  of  New  York ;  Leonard  Woods, 
1827,  theologian,  President  of  Bowdoin  College;  Ward 
Hunt,  1828,  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States;  Joseph  Alden,  1829,  teacher;  George  Washington 
Eaton,  1829,  President  of  Madison  (now  Colgate)  Uni- 
versity; John  Leighton  Wilson,  1829,  missionar}^,  scholar; 
Silas  Totten,  1830,  President  of  Washington  (now  Trinity) 
College;  Roswell  Park,  1831,  Chancellor  of  Racine  Uni- 
versity, hymn  writer;  John  H.  Ra3miond,  1832,  President 
of  Vassar  College;  Robert  W.  Hume,  1834,  missionary; 
Edmund  Hamilton  Sears,  1834,  essayist,  poet,  saint,  author 
of  "Calm  on  the  Listening  Ear  of  Night,"  "It  Came  upon 
the  Midnight  Clear"  and  other  Christian  hymns ;  John  Bige- 
low,  1835,  editor,  author,  diplomat;  Matthew  Meigs,  1836, 
founder  of  the  Hill  School;  Henry  Wager  Halleck,  1837, 
General  in  Chief  of  the  Armies  of  the  L^nited  States ;  Samuel 
R.  House,  1837,  missionary;  Austin  Blair,  1839,  Governor 
of  Michigan;  Lewis  H.  Morgan,  1840,  ethnologist;  Alex- 
ander H.  Rice,  1844,  thrice  Governor  of  Massachusetts;  the 
Rt.  Rev.  Abraham  N.  Littlejohn,  1846,  Bishop  of  Long 
Island;  John  M.  Gregory,  1846,  first  Regent  of  the  Univers- 
ity of  Illinois ;  John  T.  Hoffman,  1846,  Governor  of  the  State 
of  New  York;  Henry  R.  Pierson,  1846,  Chancellor  of  the 
University  of  the  State  of  New  York;  Chester  A.  Arthur, 
1847,  President  of  the  United  States ;  Silas  W.  Burt,  1849,  a 
pioneer,  and  one  of  the  greatest  of  them,  in  the  reform  of 
our  civil  service;  David  Murray,  1852,  educator,  principal 
initiator  of  reforms  in  education  in  Japan;  George  Wash- 
ington Hough,  1856,  astronomer;  Seaman  Asahel  Knapp, 
1856,  farmer,  re-creator  of  the  Southern  States;  James 
Rufus  Tryon,  1858,  Surgeon  General  (later  admiral)  of  th^ 

19 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

Navy  of  the  United  States ;  Chester  Holcombe,  1861,  diplo- 
mat, scholar,  author;  Charles  Emory  Smith,  1861,  editor, 
statesman,  diplomat;  Edward  C.  Taintor,  1863,  Inspector 
General  of  Imperial  Customs,  China. 

Dr,  Alexander  Duane:  The  basic  principles  of  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  as  enumerated  in  the  interesting  essay  just 
read,  are  literature,  that  is,  scholarship,  morality,  that  is, 
character,  and  friendship.  On  one  who  exemplifies  all  three 
principles  in  their  highest  degree,  on  one  known  to  all  Union 
men  and  loved  by  them  I  now  call.  I  introduce  to  you  Doctor 
George  Alexander. 

THE  CENTENNIAL  ORATION 

The  Rev.  Dr.  George  Alexander:  Mr.  President  and 
Brothers  in  Phi  Beta  Kappa : 

The  task  which  you  have  seen  fit  to  assign  me  is  too  re- 
sponsible to  be  sought;  too  honorable  to  be  declined.  To 
have  been  enrolled  among  the  orators  and  poets  of  this 
"solempne  and  gret  fraternite,"  and,  after  five  and  thirty 
years  to  be  again  thus  enrolled,  is  a  distinction  so  exalted 
as  to  induce  a  feeling  of  giddiness  and  apprehension  of 
grievous  fall. 

Pardon  me  if  I  indulge  for  a  moment  in  reminiscence. 
Thirty-six  years  ago  it  was  my  privilege  to  represent  the 
New  York  Alpha  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  the  celebration  of 
the  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Alpha  of  Massa- 
chusetts Bay.  It  was  a  memorable  occasion !  At  the  morn- 
ing session  Joseph  H.  Choate,  whose  sun  has  just  set  in  a 
blaze  of  mellow  glory,  presided  with  matchless  grace.  With 
sparkling  banter,  he  descanted  on  the  origin  of  our  "ancient 
and  mysterious  brotherhood."  Charles  Godfrey  Leland, 
author  of  "Hans  Breitmann's  Barty"  read  a  poem.  Wendell 
Phillips  pronounced  his  great  oration  on  "The  Scholar  in  a 
Republic."  Longfellow  was  there,  Phillips  Brooks,  and  a 
great  galaxy  of  scholars  and  men  of  letters.     The  business 

20 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

session  was  conducted  under  the  leadership  of  Edward 
Everett  Hale.  At  the  luncheon  there  were  several  witty 
speeches,  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  read  a  poem  beginning : 

"The  Dutch  have  taken  Holland," 

which,  in  his  published  writings  bears  the  title:  "A  Post 
Prandial."  An  allusion  to  the  castigation  which  the  orator 
of  the  morning  had  given  to  his  Alma  Mater  may  be  found 
in  the  couplet: 

"You  have  whacked  us  with  your  sceptre;  our 

backs  were  little  harmed, 
And  while  we  rubbed  our  bruises  we  owned  we 

had  been  charmed." 

His  greeting  to  Leland  was: 

"And  you,  our  quasi  Dutchman,  what  welcome 
should  be  yours 

For  all  the  wise  prescriptions  that  work  your 
laughter  cures? 

"Shake  before  taking"? — not  a  bit — the  bottle- 
cure's  a  sham ; 

Take  before  shaking,  and  you'll  find  it  shakes 
your  diaphragm." 

That  was  a  day  to  be  remembered!  The  intellectual  elite 
of  New  England  were  gathered  to  dignify  the  centennial. 
But,  in  some  respects,  the  year  1817  is  a  more  significant 
one  in  the  annals  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  than  the  year  1781. 
The  planting  at  New  Haven  and  at  Cambridge  of  slips  from 
the  original  Virginian  stock  saved  our  fraternity  from  ex-_ 
tinction;  the  granting  of  a  chapter  at  Union  saved  it  from 
provincialism  and  made  it  continental.  For  thirty  years 
previous  Phi  Beta  Kappa  had  been  confined  to  three  centers : 
Yale,  Harvard  and  Dartmouth,  where  it  had  a  dignified  ex- 
istence, but  had  shown  no  reproductive  power.  At  Union, 
the  seed-thought  generated  at  Williani  and  Mary  fell  into 

21 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

congenial  soil.  The  Alpha  of  New  York  not  only  became 
the  most  prolific  mother  of  societies  like  itself,  but  it  un- 
doubtedly inspired  those  young  undergraduates,  who,  a  few 
years  later,  founded  Kappa  Alpha,  Sigma  Phi,  and  other 
societies  in  rapid  succession,  thus  earning  for  our  Alma 
Mater  the  title:  "Mother  of  Greek  Letter  Fraternities." 
This  feature  of  academic  life  in  America  has  served  more 
than  any  other  influence  to  bind  together  the  colleges  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere. 

The  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  an  event  so  wide 
reaching  in  its  effects  seems  a  fitting  time  to  study  the 
formative  principles  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  order  to  discover, 
if  we  may,  what  gives  it  vitality. 

Wendell  Phillips,  in  the  oration  to  which  I  have  referred, 
asserted  that:  "Phi  Beta  Kappa  stands  now  simply  as  a 
representative  of  free,  brave,  American  scholarship."  I 
venture  to  qualify  his  statement  and  to  say  that  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  has  stood  historically  and  still  stands  for  a  certain 
type  of  "free,  brave,  American  scholarship" — a  type  which, 
for  two  generations,  has  been  gradually  elbowed  out  of  its 
place  in  the  sun,  but  even  in  the  shadow  must  vindicate 
its  right  to  live  and  thrive. 

Forty  years  ago,  Edward  Everett  Hale  characterized  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  as  "a  fossil  from  the  tertiary."  Its  subsequent 
revival  justifies  the  grandiloquent  prophesy  at  the  demise 
of  the  parent  chapter  in  1781 :  "The  Society  will  one  day 
rise  to  life  everlasting  and  glory  immortal." 

The  ideal  of  scholarly  attainment  which  the  founders  of 
our  Society  intended  to  perpetuate  was  first  of  all  classical. 
Its  motto  was  indicated  by  three  Greek  initials  on  the  obverse 
of  its  badge,  and  its  object  of  pursuit  by  two  Latin  initials 
on  the  reverse.  It  was  to  be  a  philosophical  society  as  both 
name  and  motto  declare.  Its  charter  and  its  whole  history 
stress  the  fact  that  it  is  a  literary  society.  The  type  of 
education  which  it  sought    to    develop    was    liberal    as    dis- 

22 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

tinguished  from  vocational.  It  was  designed  to  be  pre- 
eminently humanistic — a  fraternity  which  had  for  its  basis 
moral  worth  and  capacity  for  unselfish  friendship.  It  had 
also  an  element  of  the  mystical;  its  symbols,  its  grip,  its 
harmless  "arcana,"  made  appeal  to  the  imagination  of  in- 
genuous youth  and  to  their  natural  craving  for  contact  with 
the  mysterious,  the  unseen,  the  Divine. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  such  a  Society  should  have  been 
called  "a  fossil  from  the  tertiary."  The  founders  of  out* 
Chapter  a  hundred  years  ago  had  more  in  common  with 
Chaucer's  "clerk  of  Oxenford"  than  with  the  college  boy  of 
today.  They  could  better  understand  that  lean  and  unworld- 
ly student  who 

" was  lever  have  at  his  beddes  heed 

Twenty  bokes,  clad  in  blak  and  reed 

Of  Aristotle  and  his  philosophye 

Than  robes  riche,  or  fithele  or  gay  sautrye," — 
— far  better  than  they  could  understand  the  eager,  boister- 
ous, athletic,  worldly  minded,  pleasure  seeking  college  stud- 
ent, of  today. 

Some  such  change  in  academic  ideals  was  inevitable.  The 
old  bottles  would  not  contain  the  new  wine.  New  knowledge 
has  made  necessary  a  new  education  and  a  new  culture.  Wo 
are  living  in  a  roomier  universe  than  our  grandfathers, 

"And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the 
process  of  the  suns." 
Not  only  has  knowledge  of  the  visible  universe  become  more 
exact  and  extensive,  but  mastery  of  its  forces  has  been  ac- 
quired with  bewildering  rapidity.  Through  the  air  and 
under  the  sea  man  has  learned  to  project  his  thoughts  and 
to  project  himself.  The  poet  no  longer  needs  to  dip  into 
the  future  in  order  to  see 

" the  heavens  filled  with  commerce,  argosies 

of  magic  sails, 

28 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

Pilots   of   the   purple   twilight,   dropping  down 
with  costly  bales." 

Those  who  have  been  engaged  in  wresting  from  nature  her 
secrets  now  stand  in  quivering  expectation  of  disclosures 
more  stupendous  that  seem  ready  to  unfold.  Through  such 
a  period  the  ancient  learning  could  not  retain  possession  of 
the  field  that  was  once  all  its  own.  Classical  and  philosophi- 
cal culture  had  already  become  measurably  discredited  by 
its  rigidity,  its  conservatism,  its  want  of  relation  to  actual 
life;  discredited  too,  by  that  contingent  of  college  men  so 
well  described  in  the  caustic  phrase  of  Robert  Burns, 
"they  gang  in  stirks  and  come  oot  asses." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  eyes  of  the  human  mind  turned 
from  books  in  which  are  embalmed  the  thoughts  of  men  to 
study  God's  book  written  in  things.  How  could  an  eager 
soul  be  held  to  the  intricacies  of  the  subjunctive  mood,  when 
others,  with  no  greater  intelligence  than  his  own,  were  in  the 
laboratory  untwisting  the  multi-colored  threads  of  light,  un- 
yoking the  atoms  of  the  world,  and  watching  the  rush  of 
their  attractions,  or  creating  instruments  to  bring  the  ends 
of  the  earth  into  converse  and  to  change  the  whole  outlook 
of  human  life.  If  Plato  and  Shakespeare  had  breathed  such 
an  intellectual  atmosphere  there  would  have  been  no  Phaedo, 
no  Hamlet. 

Confronted,  then,  by  a  present  world  so  marvelous  and  en- 
chanting why  should  men  concern  themselves  about  a  world 
unseen  ?  Lured  by  such  dazzling  prospects  of  a  better  future 
why  should  they  waste  energy  in  poring  over  the  musty 
records  of  the  past? 

It  is  not  difficult  to  trace  the  effect  of  all  this  upon  the 
attitude  and  temper  of  the  educated  mind.  The  modern 
tendency  has  been  to  turn  to  the  ancients,  not  to  learn  their 
wisdom,  but  to  gird  at  their  ignorance  and  folly.  The  spirit 
of  the  age  is  no  longer  retrospective  or  introspective;  no 

24 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

longer  reverent  or  devout.  It  has  become  confident,  bold, 
masterful,  secular,  willful.  The  old  ideals  of  Providence, 
probation  and  prayer  are  tossed  into  the  discard.  All  thai 
we  call  evil  is  attributed  to  breach  of  physical  law  and  the 
all  sufficient  remedy  is  supposed  to  be  mastery  of  nature's 
secrets  and  the  utilization  of  nature's  forces  for  the  better- 
ment of  human  conditions. 

More  than  sixty  years  ago,  in  an  address  before  this 
Society,  that  profound  scholar,  Tayler  Lewis,  traced  what 
he  called  "the  generation  of  a  vicious  circle,  which  in  the 
end  brings  around  the  evils  it  affects  to  cure.  A  wrong 
elevation  of  the  physical  in  distinction  from  moral  and 
spiritual  health  tends  to  sink  morals  into  physics.  The 
wrong  importance  attached  to  our  worldly  conveniences  and 
to  the  scientific  inventions  by  which  they  are  prompted, 
gives  rise  to  a  universal  worldliness  of  thought  and  feeling. 
Thus,  naturalism  begets  secularity,  secularity  begets  selfish- 
ness, selfishness,  unchecked  by  that  which  alone  can  hold  it 
in,  the  thought  of  the  world  to  come,  breaks  through  all 
obstacles  which  human  morals  and  legislation  may  present 
to  the  unequal  acquisition  of  wealth  at  any  cost  or  at  sacrifice 
of  any  principle.  Gross  inequality  of  wealth  begets  poverty, 
not  the  healthy  and  virtuous  nevia  but  diseased  and  vicious 
poverty,  prolific  mother  of  all  evils  that  infest  the  human 
race.  From  her  are  born  despair  and  ignorance  and  reck- 
leckless  and  squalidness,  and  all  uncleanness  in  respect  to  the 
body  and  the  soul,  and  thus  the  cycle  is  completed  and 
naturalism  comes  round,  full  circle,  to  its  starting  point." 

Were  that  clairvoyant  seer  living  today  would  he  not  find 
justification  of  his  forecast  in  the  twentieth  century  develop- 
ment of  our  civilization?  j 

The  progress  of  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  stupendous, 
but  it  has  been  in  the  realm  of  the  physical.  Our  generation, 
dazzled  by  the  wealth  of  its  discoveries  and  inventions,  pre- 
occupied with  its   tools   and  its   toys,  has   thrown  its  in- 

25  I 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

lieritance  from  former  generations  to  the  moles  and  the 
bats,  and  feels  itself  competent  to  find  the  way  of  life  with 
little  aid  from  the  lamp  of  experience,  and  still  less  from  the 
light  of  Divine  revelation. 

Is  the  result  quite  satisfactory?     Has  our  devotement  to 

a  bread  and  butter  philosophy  yielded  a  product  of  which 

we  have  reason  to  boast?     We  have  glorified  organization, 

efficiency,  the  acquisition  and  conservation  of  worldly  wealtli 

and  physical  well-being,  and  yet  civilization  is  today  making 

pitiful  efforts  to  conserve  with  its  left  hand  what  with  its 

strong  right  hand  it  wrecks  and  destroys.     Not  only  so,  bu*: 

that  nation  to  which  all  others  have  been  going  to  school, 

that  nation,  the  most  advanced  in  the  application  of  science 

to   industry,   and   commerce,   and   social   welfare,   has   pre- 

j    cipitated  a  struggle  in  which  her  sons  are  being  slaughtered 

/     by  the  million  and  her  women   and   children  pinched  with 

I     hunger,  a  struggle  in  which  half  the  world  has  marshalled 

its  forces  to  work  devastation.     The  "vicious  circle"  seems 

to  have  come  round  to  its  starting  point. 

Ruthlessness,     frightfulness,     savagery     and     breach     of 
plighted  faith  have  been  the  products  of  a  kultur  so  highly 
developed  that  it  has  seemed  to  its  authors  worthy  to  be  im- 
posed by  force  upon  all  mankind.    This  moral  perversion  and 
/  chaos  is  not  a  chance  phenomenon  with  no  causal  relations 

that  can  be  traced.  It  was  a  German,  Heinrich  Heine,  who 
wrote  eighty-five  years  ago :  "Laugh  not  at  my  advice,  the 
advice  of  a  dreamer,  who  warns  you  against  Kantians, 
Fichteans,  and  philosophers  of  nature,  nor  at  the  dreamer 
who  awaits  in  the  world  of  things  to  be  seen  that  which  has 
been  before  in  the  realm  of  shadows.  Thought  goes  before 
the  deed  as  lightning  precedes  thunder.  German  thunder 
is  indeed  German,  and  not  in  a  hurry,  and  it  comes  rolling 
slowly  onward;  but  come  it  will,  and  when  ye  hear  it  crash, 
as  naught  ever  crashed  before  in  the  whole  history  of  the 

26 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

world,  then  know  that  der  deutsche  Donner,   our  German 
thunder,  has  as  last  hit  the  mark." 

Naturalism  divorced  from  regard  for  eternal  verities  leads 
inevitably  to  moral  perversion.  Just  as  certainly  it  induces 
a  distortion  of  mental  faculties.  Training  in  science,  un- 
balanced by  those  elements  of  culture  which  appeal  to  the 
imagination  and  the  hearts  of  men,  means  death  to  practical 
wisdom.  A  mechanistic  logic  may  yield  splendid  results 
when  applied  to  things  and  forces,  but  when  applied  to  the 
workings  of  the  human  spirit,  to  the  actions  and  institutions 
of  free  men,  it  leads  to  conclusions  which  outrage  the  com- 
mon judgment  of  mankind.  It  was  an  Austrian  minister 
of  education  who,  moved  to  wrath  by  some  manifestation 
of  inability  to  sense  psychological  factors,  exclaimed  in  his 
broken  English :  "Dese  Germans,  dey  knows  everyding.  Dey 
understands  nodding." 

The  pursuit  of  secular  knowledge  without  the  believing 
spirit  yields  a  yet  sorrier  fruitage.  It  ministers  to  a  certain 
pessimism  that  robs  nature  herself  of  her  charm.  More  true 
than  when  it  was  penned,  is  the  confession  of  Wordsworth: 

"The  world  is  too  much  with  us ;  late  and  soon, 

Getting  and  spending,  w^e  lay  waste  our  powers : 

Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours ; 

We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon! 

*     *     *     *     Great  God!    I'd  rather  be 

A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn ; 

So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 

Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn ; 

Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea; 

Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 
Let  us  not  deceive  ourselves.  With  eager  feet  we  may 
pursue  knowledge  in  order  to  gain  pleasure,  but  the  spirit 
of  gladness  goes  out  of  life  when  we  part  company  with 
what  Virgil  calls  the  pii  vates,  the  prophets  who  have  com- 
muned with  their  own  souls  and  talked  with  God. 

27 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

"But  John  P. 

Robinson,  he 

Sez  they  didn't  know  everythin'  down  in  Judee." 
True,  they  had  very  little  of  our  present  knowledge  of 
forces  and  things.  Their  thinking  has  been  called  narrow ; 
but  no  one  can  deny  that  it  was  deep  and  high. 
The  echoes  of  Sinai  still  reverberate  in  the  ?unplumbed 
depths  of  the  human  spirit,  and  the  saying  of  Him  who  trod 
the  shores  of  deep  Galilee  is  still  true:  "The  words  that  I 
speak  unto  you,  they  are  spirit,  and  they  are  life." 

It  must  be  evident  that  I  am  not  merely  making  a  defense 
of  the  classics  as  the  basis  of  liberal  education.  That  is 
scarcely  necessary  since  all  the  Presidents  we  have  are  now 
lined  up  against  the  iconoclastic  onslaught  of  the  Rocke- 
feller Foundation.  What  I  plead  for,  and  what  I  believe  is 
surely  coming,  coming  more  surely  since  our  youth  are  once 
more  responding  to  the  call  for  devotement  of  everything  to 
an  ideal — ^what  I  plead  for,  is  a  revival  of  interest  in  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  in  history,  and  philosophy,  and  litera- 
ture, in  the  wisdom  which  successive  generations  have 
garnered  not  only  from  the  experience  of  life,  but  from  fel- 
lowship with  God,  from  the  discovery  of  His  ways  in  the 
realm  of  mind,  as  well  as  in  the  realm  of  matter.  Imagina- 
tion, sympathy,  and  faith  are  forces  just  as  real  as  gravita- 
tion or  chemical  affinity.  Any  people  that  leaves  them  out 
of  its  curriculum  will  lose  their  sanity  and  will  find  that  the 
"stars  in  their  courses"  fight  against  them. 

Am  I  chargeable  with  temerity  in  ventilating  such  opinions 
within  the  precincts  of  Union  College  ?  Here  the  new.educa- 
tion  with  its  instruments  of  precision,  its  keen  analyses,  its 
urgent  endeavors  to  keep  pace  with  the  world's  progress  in 
research  and  in  the  adaptation  of  nature's  forces  to  human 
needs,  flourishes  and  ought  to  flourish !  But  here  also  ancient 
ideals  survive,  nourished  by  traditions  and  memories  which 
to  some  of  us  are  inexpressibly  dear.     Here  the  past  lives 

28 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

around  us  as  we  sing  our  Union  song,  which  confessedly 
subjects  fancy  to  undue  strain,  but  which,  nevertheless, 
breathes  the  very  spirit  of  Hellas. 

"Let  the  Grecian  dream  of  his  sacred  stream 

And  sing  of  the  brave  adorning 
That  Phoebus  weaves  from  his  laurel  leaves 
At  the  golden  gates  of  the  morning." 
Here  we  have  a  college  president  who  knows  the  paths  that 
lead  to  the  forest  of  Arden,  and  can  make  us  feel  the  thrill 
of  ancient  minstrelsy  and  song. 

We  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  hail  the  new  learning  and  rejoice 
in  it,  but  we  would  have  it  mellowed  and  humanized  and 
hallowed  by  ^he  wisdom  which  is  from  above. 

"Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to  more 
But  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell. 
That  mind  and  soul  according  well 
May  make  one  music  as  before. 
But  vaster !" 

Dr.  Duane:  I  am  sure  the  eloquent  words  you  have  just 
heard  have  brought  to  all  of  you,  as  they  have  brought  to 
me,  a  sense  of  what  we  are  really  here  for.  We  are  here  not 
to  rejoice,  not  to  show  our  pride  in  our  centennial,  although 
we  have  much  to  rejoice  for,  much  to  be  proud  of.  We  come 
here  in  a  spirit  of  dedication,  of  dedication  to  a  new  spirit 
and  a  new  ideal,  of  dedication  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  to  the 
service  of  the  country  in  its  present  crisis.  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
and  the  men  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  have  never  failed  the  coun- 
try before.  In  the  Civil  War  the  Alpha  of  New  York  sent 
many  men  into  service.  So  shall  it  be  today.  And  our  Alma 
Mater,  Union,  the  home  of  the  Alpha  of  New  York,  will  send 
forth  her  sons  now  with  no  reluctant  hands. 

I  think  I  hear  her  voice  saying,  as  the  voices  of  many 
mothers  of  America  will  be  saying,  in  the  fine  words  of 
Power's,  nobly  paraphrasing  an  ignoble  song : 

29 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

"I  did  not  raise  my  boy  to  be  a  coward, 
J  To  bear  with  blood  unstirred  whate'er  befalls, 

To  skulk,  or  shirk,  or  flinch  in  times  untoward. 
To  stop  his  ears  when  need  or  honor  calls. 

"I  did  not  raise  my  son  to  bide  in  pleasure 
When  duty  summons  him  to  suffer  pain ; 

To  call  mere  easeful  plenty  good;  to  measure 
All  by  the  paltry  rule  of  private  gain. 

"I  would  not  have  him   cringe  when  proud   ambition 
Fares  forth  full-armed  to  work  its  lawless  will, 

To  use  his  own  upon  some  base  condition. 
Or  look  on  weakness  outraged  and  be  still. 

"Better,  far  better,  that  my  boy  were  lying, 
Foredone  and  shattered  on  the  stricken  field ; 

Better,  far  better,  that  my  boy  were  dying, 

Where  freemen,  sore  forefoughten,  scorn  to  yield. 

"I  love  him  not  ?    Ah  me !    Too  well  I  love  him. 
To  have  him  live  at  ease  full-fed  and  whole, 

A  recreanl:  to  the  righteous  God  above  him, 
A  traitor  to  his  birthright  and  his  soul." 

Gentlemen  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  I  declare  the  ceremonies 
of  this  convention  closed. 

THE  DINNER 

At  the  Mohawk  Club,  Schenectady,  on  Tuesday  evening, 
June  12,  after  a  good  and  pleasant  dinner.  Dr.  Alexander 
Duane,  president  of  Alpha  of  New  York,  gave  the  toasts  and 
responses  were  made  in  part  as  follows : 

Dr.  Duane  :  Members  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  here  assem- 
bled: I  congratulate  you  all  on  this  splendid  assemblage.  I 
will  give  you  no  formal  greeting.    That  will  be  done  in  better 

30 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

terms  by  others ;  but  we  have  here  members  from  various 
chapters,  delegates ;  we  have  here  representatives  that  do  us 
honor ;  we  have  here  members  of  our  own  college,  of  our  own 
chapter,  from  the  youngest  to  one  (the  Rev.  Dr.  Alfred  P. 
Botsford,  '47)  who  writes:  "If  possible  I  hope  to  attend. 
It  will  be  my  seventieth  celebration  of  membership,  and  the 
seventieth  anniversary  of  my  graduation."  I  am  happy  to 
say  he  has  attended  and  is  here.    (Applause.) 

We  have  another  letter  from  one  who  could  not  be  pres- 
ent, but  he  writes  in  the  vernacular : 

(Dr.  Duane  here  read  "in  the  jvernacular"  a  postal, 
couched  in  modern  Greek,  from  Dr.  Thomas  Featherston- 
haugh,  '71,  remarking,  as  he  did  so,  that  he  would  not  trans- 
late it  as,  of  course,  all  members  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  were 
conversant  with  modern  Greek.) 

There  comes  at  this  time  a  little  more  solemn  note  in  our 
proceedings ;  there  comes  the  chance  of  service  to  us  all. 
You  know  on  board  ship  when  there  is  need  for  some  little 
thing  to  be  done,  the  officer  of  the  deck  will  call  somebody 
from  below;  the  boastwain's  pipe  will  sound  and  it  will  call 
up  two  or  three  men.  If  they  need  more,  then  the  officer 
of  the  deck  will  call  again,  the  boatswain's  whistle  will  sound, 
and  they  will  call,  perhaps,  the  second  division  on  the  spar 
deck.  If  the  need  is  greater,  if  there  is  more  to  be  done, 
then  the  captain  calls  for  more,  the  boatswain's  whistle  sounds 
and  they  may  summon  the  whole  starboard  watch  on  deck. 
But  in  times  of  surpassing  need,  in  times  when  the  enemy  is 
at  hand,  then  the  cry  is,  as  the  boatswain's  whistle  sounds, 
"All  hands  on  deck!"  Members  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  that 
sound  has  gone  forth;  our  great  captain  has  called;  our 
President  has  summoned  us  to  aid,  and  the  cry  is  "All  hands !" 
I  call  you  all  to  drink  to  the  flag. 

(The  guests  arose  and  drank  to  the  toast.) 

In  previous  years,  when  I  have  sat  among  the  lower  seats 
at  the  table,  and  looked  up  at  the  one  who  occupied  this 

31 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

so-called  seat  of  honor,  I  viewed  him  with  envy,  with  admira- 
tion, and  with  dread.  I  find  now  that  in  this  position  there 
is  very  little  to  admire  and  nothing  to  fear.  The  position  of 
toastmaster,  in  fact,  is  extremely  easy.  All  he  has  to  do  is 
to  tell  other  people  to  work  and  they  do  it.  And  he  is  not 
an  easy  boss ;  he  is  not  a  benevolent  tyrant.  All  he  has  to  do 
is  to  bid  a  better  man  than  he  stand  up  and  speak.  Thus  it 
is  that  I  find  I  can  devolve  one  of  my  duties,  very  agreeable 
to  me,  on  one  better  fitted  than  I ;  and  in  expressing  the  greet- 
ings of  the  Alpha  of  New  York  of  Union  College  to  the  guests 
here  assembled  I  call  on  one  eminently  qualified  to  express 
those  greetings,  on  one  whom  I  need  not  introduce.  President 
Richmond  of  Union  College.      (Applause.) 

President  Richmond  (in  part)  ;******* 
One  hundred  years  is  a  long  time,  and  much  water  has 
gone  under  the  bridge  in  those  years ;  things  have  changed 
very  much.  I  fancy  that  in  1817  the  times  were  compara- 
tively simple  and  certainly  comparatively  peaceful.  *  *  * 
Well,  those  were  comparatively  peaceful  and  simple  times, 
and  in  the  meantime,  because  one  cannot  think  excepting  in 
retrospect  of  a  period  one  hundred  years  ago,  men  have 
come  and  gone.  *  *  *  jsj^qj-  gQ  with  Phi  Beta  Kappa. 
I  have  been  thinking  today,  since  we  emerged  from  this  second 
flood  into  sunshine,  *  *  *  of  that  beautiful  little  poem 
about  the  June  day : 

Sweet  day,  so  cool,  so  calm,  so  bright ! 

The  bridal  of  the  sea  and  sky — 
The  dew  shall  weep  thy  fall  to-night ; 

For  thou  must  die. 

***** 

Sweet  spring,  full  of  sweet  days  and  roses, 
A  box  where  sweets  compacted  lie. 

My  music  shows  ye  have  your  closes. 
And  all  must  die. 

B2 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

Only  a  sweet  and  virtuous  soul, 
Like  seasoned  timber,  never  gives ; 

But  though  the  whole  world  turns  to  coal. 
Then  chiefly  lives. 

So  I  say  men  have  come  and  men  have  gone,  but  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  remains.  And  her  claim  to  immortality  is  neither 
power,  certainly  not  wealth,  obviously  not  beauty.  Her  only 
title  is  the  title  to  mansions  in  the  sk}'^,  for  her  symbol  should 
mean  that.  The  virtue  af  the  mind  and  of  the  soul  is  the 
mark  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men. 

And  so  we  are  living  today  and  we  are  immortal;  and  it 
is  a  good  thing  in  these  days  when  efficiency  *  *  *  is 
deified  and  when  the  power  of  wealth  is  so  great,  it  is  a  fine 
thing  to  have  an  organization  that  stands  for  the  imperish- 
able. I  have  heard  of  a  man  who  said  he  would  give  a  mil- 
lion dollars  to  be  a  member  of  the  University  Club.  Of 
course  what  he  meant  was  to  be  qualified  to  be  a  member  of 
the  University  Club.  I  should  hate  to  see  this  chapter  of 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  subjected  to  such  a  temptation.  (Laugh- 
ter.) I  am  sure  you  feel,  as  we  all  do,  that  it  is  a  proud 
distinction  to  be  qualified  for  membership  in  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  and  I  am  sure  that  all  of  us  realize  that  it  is  one 
of  the  things  that  we  could  not  estimate.     *     *     * 

It  is  a  great  record  to  be  able  to  point  back  to  one  hundred 
years  of  life,  of  intellectual  life,  to  be  able  even  to  mention 
the  names,  as  they  were  mentioned  in  succession  by  Professor 
Bennett  yesterday,  of  some  of  the  dead  men,  who  were  very 
living  men  in  their  age.  That  catalogue  was  a  notable  cata- 
logue. *  *  *  The  record  is  an  astonishing  one,  but  the 
thing  that  impressed  me  as  I  heard  that  catalogue  of  names 
was  the  fact  that  those  men  were  not  hermits ;  they  were  not 
recluses ;  they  were  not  the  selfish  scholar ;  they  were  men 
who  mixed  in  public  affairs.  *  *  *  And  in  this  opening 
appeal  which  you  made,  Mr.  President,  which  expresses  our 

33 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

feeling,  of  course,  at  this  moment,  what  is  keenly  in  my  mind 
i,?  the  fact  that  our  inheritance  is  an  inheritance  not  merely 
of  scholarship,  but  an  inheritance  of  action  and  of  patriotic 
service.  That  was  the  keynote  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  the  old 
days.     It  is  the  keynote  tonight.     (Applause.) 

Dr.  Duane:  I  want  to  say  for  the  Alpha  of  New  York 
that  it  stands  ever  ready  to  refuse  any  offer  of  a  million 
dollars  from  any  applicant  for  membership  or  for  any  other 
purpose.  ^ 

Again  my  task  is  extremely  easy.  I  shall  not  introduce, 
but  I  shall  present,  one  noted  and  known  to  you  all,  known 
to  every  American;  scholar,  lawyer,  administrator.  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  and  since,  and  not  least  of  his 
titles,  loyal  citizen,  always  subordinating  the  claims  of  party 
to  the  needs  of  the  Republic.  I  give  you  William  H.  Taft. 
(Applause.) 

Mr.  Taft:  Mr.  Chairman,  lady  and  gentlemen:  That 
was  a  Presbyterian  speech*  we  have  just  heard.  The  Pres- 
bj^terians  have  got  to  a  point  where  they  only  deal  with  hell 
in  postprandial  demonstrations.  (Laughter.)  There  are 
some,  of  course,  who  cannot  get  along  without  hell  because 
it  is  a  necessary  place  to  put  some  people  in.  They  don't 
know  how  to  dispose  of  them  otherwise.  But  the  Presby- 
terians are  melting  in  that  regard.  Once  in  a  while  we  have 
a  recurrence  of  enthusiasm  on  that  subject,  as  we  have  today 
in  the  Honorable  William  Sunday  when  he  disposes  of  us 
Unitarians.  (Laughter.)  He  fries  us,  and  does  a  good  many 
things ;  but,  somehow,  we  continue  to  encumber  the  earth. 

Dr.  Richmond  and  I  have  played  golf  together,  and  we 
have  had  a  good  many  confidential  conversations  that  that 
game  elicits,  and  as  a  gentleman  I  expect  to  regard  those 
confidences.     (Laughter.)     I  cannot  give  you  any  evidence 


♦NOTE:  The  reference  is  to  some  omitted  remarks. 

34 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

of  his  real  belief  in  hell  by  reference  to  expressions  that  I 
have  heard  on  the  field  because  it  would  not  be  fair.  (Laugh- 
ter.) His  style,  however,  I  will  say,  both  as  a  golfer  and  as 
meeting  situations  where  language  can  cure  is  admirable. 
(Laughter.)  It  is  intense  and  emphatic  and  it  satisfies  every 
requirement  of  Presbyterian  theology.     (Laughter.) 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  be  in  Union.  Union  is  one  of 
those  colleges  that  mean  character.  It  means  traditions  that 
make  for  character  in  all  its  graduates  because  they  are 
inspired  to  be  worthy  of  those  who  have  gone  before.  I  have 
no  invidious  remarks  to  make  with  reference  to  the  great 
universities  that  have  suddenly  sprung  into  wonderful  use- 
fulness in  this  country,  but  here  in  this  atmosphere  one  may, 
without  being  invidious,  dwell  on  the  advantages  of  a  tradi- 
tion, of  honorable  history  that  certainly  makes  for  the 
advancement  and  the  happiness  of  those  who  come  under  its 
influence. 

And  now  about  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  I  don't  know  whether 
I  am  looking  into  the  faces  of  a  lot  of  reactionaries  or  not. 
I  am  afraid  I  am  because  I  seem  to  feel  a  sympathetic  atti- 
tude. (Laughter.)  I  think  Phi  Beta  Kappa  is  reactionary 
as  I  understand  it.  You  really  are  in  favor  of  studying  a 
good  many  things  that  you  do  not  have  to  use  professionally 
afterwards.  You  think  that  it  isn't  essential  in  order  to 
secure  efficiency  and  usefulness  in  life,  if  you  are  going  to  be 
a  brick  manufacturer,  to  confine  your  efforts  to  making 
studies  into  clay  and  to  making  the  best  bricks.  That  seems 
to  be  the  modern  tendency.  Latin  and  Greek  are  to  be  ex- 
cluded because  they  do  not  offer  any  discipline  for  the  mind. 
Geometry  makes  a  better  geometrician,  and  the  study  of 
Greek  would  help  a  man  to  learn  modern  Greek.  The  study 
of  Latin  would  not  help  him  to  understand  law  Latin. 
(Laughter.)  Therefore  we  must  reject  that.  Now,  I  do  not 
believe  that.  And  when  the  expert  teacher,  or  the  man  who 
says  he  is  an  expert  teacher,  tells  me  that  the  study  of  Latin 

35 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

and  the  study  of  geometry  do  not  give  me  mental  discipline 
I  am  a  witness  myself.  What  I  mean  is,  I  hope  I  understand 
the  operations  of  my  own  mind ;  I  agree,  that  is  assuming  a 
good  deal ;  but  I  hope  I  do  to  some  extent.  And  if  the  study 
of  geometry,  of  mathematics,  of  algebra  and  of  Latin  and 
Greek  did  not  help  me  then  I  am  utterly  blind  to  what  has 
enabled  me  to  float  along.  (Laughter  and  applause.)  I  feel 
as  if  it  is  time  somebody  spoke  out  on  the  subject.  I  feel 
that  because  a  number  of  millions  of  dollars  are  arrayed  on 
the  other  side  that  it  is  no  reason  why  we  should  give  up  all 
that  has  been  established  as  a  means  of  education  in  times 
past.  That  there  are  improvements  to  be  made  doubtless 
must  be  admitted;  but  that  we  must  reject  everything  that 
we  have  been  studying  as  perfectly  useless  and  go  into  other 
things  under  a  character  of  teacher  that  never  was  on  sea 
or  land,  because  you  must  have  a  genius  to  work  out  the 
theories  of  instruction  that  are  thus  handed  out  to  us  as 
necessary  for  our  primary  and  secondary  schools,  to  me — 
well,  I  don't  want  to  characterize  it  by  any  such  language  as 
8  Presbyterian  would  use  (laughter) — is  unreasonable.  And 
as  I  understand  it  Phi  Beta  Kappa  stands  for  a  different 
kind  of  education. 

Now,  Phi  Beta  Kappa  represents  an  effort  when  you  are 
in  an  educational  institution ;  when  you  are  in  an  institution 
of  learning  its  represents  a  reward  for  appreciating  what  the 
object  of  that  institution  is  and  devoting  your  energies  to 
acquiring  that  which  primarily  directed  you  into  that  insti- 
tution. I  do  not  mean  to  minimize  the  importance  of  other 
activities ;  but  when  a  man  is  trying  to  get  an  education, 
when  he  is  trying  to  fit  himself  by  the  training  and  discipline 
of  his  mind  in  an  institution,  it  does  not  seem  to  take  any 
more  principle  than  you  learn  in  geometry  to  prove  that  the 
man  who  devotes  most  of  his  time  and  effort  to  doing  that 
and  who  does  it  successfully  is  the  man  who  carries  out  the 
purpose  that  was  intended  when  institutions  of  learning  were 

36 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

founded.  What  I  deprecate  is  the  tone  that  has  been  assumed 
from  time  to  time  that  the  man  who  studied  here  in  college 
was  a  man  who  did  not  appreciate  what  the  real  essence  of 
college  life  was.  I  deny  that  a  man  cannot  stand  high  in 
college  and  acquire  a  good  education  and  at  the  same  time 
enjoy  to  the  full  all  those  other  delightful  features  of  educa- 
tion in  a  college  like  this,  all  those  associations  of  friendship, 
all  those  lifelong  bonds  that  hold  one  to  the  college  and  hold 
those  who  have  been  through  the  college. 

They  didn't  have  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  Yale  when  I  was 
there.  For  some  reason  or  other  it  had  been  suspended.  I 
don't  know  why.  But  they  took  us  in  by  a  nunc  pro  tunc 
entry  and  we  are  claiming  it.  We  think  it  is  just  as  good  as 
if  it  had  been  earned  while  we  were  there,  with  a  little  less 
of  the  responsibility,  perhaps,  in  carrying  on  the  organiza- 
tion. It  is  a  great  thing.  It  stimulates  effort.  I  know 
because  I  have  become  a  college  professor,  and  I  am  engaged 
in  trying  to  instruct  the  youth  in  the  fundamental  principles 
of  the  Federal  Constitution.  I  met  a  Presbyterian  minister 
yesterday.  He  says,  "You  are  in  Yale,  but  you  don't  really 
do  any  work  there,  do  you?"  (Laughter.)  "Well,"  I  said, 
"I  deliver  five  lectures  a  week;  how  many  do  you  deliver.'* 
And  I  have  a  bunch  of  examination  papers  in  my  valise  that 
I  would  be  glad  to  turn  over  to  you  and  see  whether  you 
think  I  do  any  work  or  not."  Now,  I  have  observed  a  sensi- 
tiveness about  youth  in  my  class  with  reference  to  the  marks 
I  give  them,  and  I  like  to  see  it ;  I  like  to  have  them  wish  to 
stand  higher.  I  think  it  is  a  sublimated  theory  that  boys  of 
that  age  are  to  study  just  for  the  love  of  studying  and  may 
not  be  properly  stimulated  by  rewards  that  come  from  suc- 
cessful competition  with  their  fellows  and  from  a  good  appre- 
ciation of  what  they  do  by  their  instructors.  I  do  not  see 
why  we  should  not  improve  the  motives  of  human  nature  in 
helping  education  as  nature  improves,  and  civilization  im- 
proves, those  motives  in  getting  on,  in  making  real  progress. 

87 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

I  think  Phi  Beta  Kappa  represents  a  spirit  in  the  colleges 
that  should  be  encouraged.  It  isn't  true,  statistics  show  that 
it  isn't  true,  that  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  are  the  men  who 
are  not  useful  in  after  life.  The  pecrentage  of  useful  men 
is  far  higher  among  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  than  among 
those  who  were  not  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men.  The  investiga- 
tion has  been  made  and  the  result  has  been  stated  statistic- 
ally. And  it  stands  to  reason  that,  when  men  are  in  college 
for  a  certain  purpose,  the  men  who  carry  out  that  purpose 
most  effectively,  who  exercise  the  self-restraint  and  the  ap- 
plication and  the  resistance  to  the  little  temptations  and  the 
sacrifice  of  some  of  the  hours  of  leisure  and  enjoyment,  will 
be  the  men  who,  when  they  come  to  meet  the  problems  of 
after  life,  have  developed  in  them  the  spirit  that  makes  for 
success  and  usefulness.  You  do  not  have  to  argue  it  out 
elaborately.    It  seems  to  follow  as  an  easy  inference. 

Now,  of  course,  those  of  us  that  are  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men 
are  said  to  get  together  and  jolly  each  other  with  mutual 
congratulations  that  we  are  better  than  other  people.  Well, 
perhaps  there  is  something  in  that.  (Laughter.)  But  the 
basis  for  our  getting  together  and  jollying  has  much  more 
substance  in  it  than  a  good  many  things  that  get  men  together 
and  lead  to  mutual  congratulation.  And  we  don't  hurt  any- 
body else.  We  don't  hurt  anybody  any  more  than  the  Pres- 
byterian hurts  a  Unitarian  by  consigning  him  to  hell. 
(Laughter.)  He  has  no  particular  power  of  disposition. 
(Laughter.)  It  is  merely,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  a  brutum 
fulmen.  It  helps  the  gentleman  who  makes  the  disposition 
psychologically  and  subjectively  and  it  doesn't  hurt  the 
object  at  all.     (Laughter.) 

But,  gentlemen,  excuse  me ;  I  have  no  right  to  occupy  your 
time.  I  sympathize  with  the  president  of  the  university  in 
having  during  these  busy  days  of  commencement  week  to 
make  so  many  speeches  that  he  protests  each  time  he  rises 
against  the  custom  that  makes  him  speak,  and  then,  as  we 

38 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

have  seen  tonight,  makes  a  better  speech,  so  that  it  gives  rise 
to  a  little  bit  of  suspicion  of  insincerity  when  he  makes  such  a 
successful  appeal  as  he  has  made  to  us  tonight.  The  president, 
the  distinguished  president,  of  this  association,  the  national 
president,  is  here,  and  he  has  forbidden  me  to  listen  to  his 
address  of  an  hour  which  he  proposes  to  make.  (Laughter.) 
He  apparently  thought  that  I  had  not  had  the  principles  of 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  sufficiently  imbedded  in  me  to  stand  that 
test  because  I  was  not  an  active  member  during  college,  and 
so  he  pushed  me  on  lest  that  hour  might  result  in  some  quips 
on  my  part.  I  beg  to  assure  him  that  I  could  have  stood  it. 
We  used  to  have  forty  minute  and  hour  sermons  in  college 
when  I  was  there,  and  I  think  I  am  a  better  man  on  account 
of  it ;  not  so  much  because  of  the  contents  of  the  sermons, 
but  because  of  the  moral  character  that  it  developed  in  main- 
taining open  eyes  during  the  test. 

I  felicitate  Union  on  her  great  history  and  on  her  growth 
under  her  present  president ;  and  I  felicitate  her  that  she  has 
the  oldest  Phi  Beta  Kappa  chapter  in  New  York.  It  is 
proper  that  she  should  have.  It  is  a  type  of  what  Union- 
made  men  are.  I  had  the  pleasure  of  a  personal  acquaintance 
with  President  Arthur.  I  was  the  recipient  of  an  appoint- 
ment from  him  so  far  back  that  even  President  Richmond 
cannot  recollect  it.  He  appointed  me  Collector  of  Internal 
Revenue  when  I  was  twenty-three,  and  I  served  him  for  a 
year,  and  then  concluded  that  it  was  wiser  to  go  back  to  my 
profession;  but  it  brought  me  into  personal  contact  with 
him,  and  gave  me  a  delightful  reminiscence  of  a  very  delight- 
ful gentleman  and  useful  public  servant,  a  graduate  of  Union. 
I  thank  you.     (Applause.) 

Dr.  Duane  :  Certainly  we  are  extremely  glad  to  have  had 
greetings  to  the  Alpha  of  New  York  from  the  Alpha  of  Con- 
necticut, as  voiced  by  Mr.  Taft. 

"Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way" ;  but  I  have 
noticed  that  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way  back  east 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

whenever  a  Union  man  has  carried  it  west,  and  particularly 
so  about  commencement  time.  We  are  fortunate  that  that 
has  been  the  case  this  year,  for  now  we  shall  listen  to  an 
alumnus  of  Union  who  has  returned  for  his  reunion,  the  Right 
Reverend  Irving  P.  Johnson,  Bishop  Coadjutor  of  Colorado 
and  member  of  the  class  of  1887. 

Bishop  Johnson  :  Whenever  a  man  in  England  is  ap- 
pointed to  the  episcopate  and  goes  to  the  wilderness  and 
returns  to  the  land  that  sent  him  forth  they  always  call  him 
a  returned  empty ;  and  so  I  have  come  back  to  you  tonight 
in  that  capacity.  I  feel  a  little  embarrassment  over  my  mem- 
bership in  Phi  Beta  Kappa  for  it  was  not  even  honorary.  As 
I  recall  the  four  years  of  my  college  course,  I  may  be  said  to 
have  reached  first  on  a  scratch  hit,  was  sacrificed  to  second 
bj'  my  chum,  who  knew  all  the  mathematics  there  w^as  to  be 
known,  and  reached  third  on  an  error  of  the  faculty,  for  I 
did  not  do  any  stud^^ing  in  my  junior  year  yet  pulled  my 
highest  marks,  and  slipped  home  by  a  close  decision  of  the 
umpire.  I  owe  my  Phi  Beta  Kappa  to  the  fact  that  an  '86 
man  came  back  to  '87  and  graduated  with  it ;  so  that  I  can 
scarcely  call  it  an  earned  run. 

However,  I  feel  very  glad  that  I  slipped  in,  in  a  way,  and 
what  I  wish  to  say  tonight  is  by  way  of  endorsement  of  the 
principles  that  underlie  Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  the  face  of  a 
combination  of  central  powers  that  seems  to  me  to  have  sub- 
marined our  high  schools  and  thrown  bombs  upon  our  uni- 
versities and  injected  poisonous  gases  into  our  youth.  And 
I  wish  in  the  few  moments  while  I  speak  to  you  to  endorse  the 
principle  that  I  have  never  lost  sight  of,  though  I  have  prac- 
ticed it  very  slightly,  that  the  classics  arc  the  foundation  of 
that  triple  alliance  of  culture,  art  and  religion  which  seems 
to  me  infinitely  preferable  to  a  mechanical  w^orld  that  the 
central  powers  of  material  wealth  and  material  science  try 
to  force  us  to  live  in.    If  they  are  successful  in  creating  such 

40 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

a  world  as  they  seem  disposed  to  create,  I  should  be  very 
glad  to  be  relieved  from  the  necessity  of  living  in  it. 

To  my  mind  life  is  a  thing  of  three  dimensions.  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  straight  line ;  it  is  a  mathematical  fiction. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  plane ;  it  is  simply  without  sub- 
stance. The  only  thing  that  really  exists  is  the  thing  of 
length  and  breadth  and  height ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  a 
life  without  length  and  breadth  and  height  loses  its  reality, 
and  ceases  to  be  that  which  the  Creator  intended  it  to  be. 
Education  is  the  drawing  out  of  life,  not  merely  in  the  acquis- 
itive qualities  of  the  fox,  nor  the  predatory  habits  of  the 
w  olf ;  nor  is  it  merely  the  cunning  of  psychologic  information 
about  things  that  have  been  created,  and  which  man  after  all 
only  discovers ;  but  life  is  the  accumulation  of  those  three 
qualities  of  reverence^  which  I  think  is  placed  suitably  as  a 
first  petition  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  without  which  there 
can  be  no  other  life,  sympathy, — sympathy  for  the  inefficient 
— and  an  eternal  purpose,  instead  of  the  mere  opportunism 
of  temporary  gain.  I  feel  that  education  in  this  country 
under  its  present  dominion  is  succeeding  admirably  in  every 
particular  but  one,  and  that  one  is  that  it  fails  to  educate. 
I  feel  that  the  record  of  the  various  countries  of  the  world  in 
which,  in  the  matter  of  solid  and  substantial  books  printed, 
the  United  States  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  list,  except  Spain, 
and  if  you  put  Portugal  with  Spain  is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
list,  in  a  country  that  boasts  of  universal  education  is  an  in- 
dictment upon  the  subversion  of  education  from  the  true 
purpose  of  giving  length  and  breadth  and  height  to  human 
character  into  merely  training  men  into  a  kind  of  mechanical 
Frankenstein. 

We  have  it  in  all  departments  of  life.  I  won't  refer  to 
Presbyterians  particularly.  I  differ  from  the  former  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States.  Most  of  the  people  that  have 
consigned  me  to  those  regions  that  he  referred  to  I  am  sure 
were  not  Presb^^terians  because  their  language  was  of  a  char- 

41 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

acter  to  indicate  that  they  were  very  far  from  having  any 
religious  tendencies  or  sympathies ;  but  my  own  judgment  and 
feeling  is  that  we  as  a  fraternity  have  a  great  function,  in 
the  face  of  the  present  conditions  of  education  in  this  coun- 
try, to  stand  as  I  myself  stood  with  regard  to  my  own  sons 
and  as  I  hope  every  member  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  stands  with 
regard  to  his  :  to  maintain  that  whether  they  go  on  in  a  class- 
ical education  or  not  is  their  own  responsibility,  but  that  it 
is  my  responsibility  to  see  that  they  have  the  foundations  of 
it  and  know  what  it  is  so  that  they  can  go  on  with  it  if  they 
want  to,  and  to  maintain  that  a  classical  education  is  the 
basis  of  culture  and  art  and  religion  so  far  as  its  intellectual 
side  is  concerned. 

I  know  that  when  my  mind  goes  back  in  retrospect  over  my 
own  college  course  and  the  various  professors  and  instructors 
rise  before  me  in  that  reality  which  to  those  who  have  been 
away  some  time  and  come  back  is  the  only  reality  (to  me 
the  personality  of  those  men  who  instructed  me  and  those 
men  who  prepared  me  for  life's  battle  is  real,  and  those  who 
now  occupy  the  chairs  may  be  realities  to  others,  but  they 
are  fictions  to  me)  and  as  I  recall  those  professors  and  in- 
structors who  prepared  me  there  stands  out,  as  I  think  there 
stands  out  to  every  alumnus  of  Union  of  the  days  whereof  I 
speak,  not  so  much  the  figure  of  those  who  prepared  us  in 
natural  science,  not  so  much  the  figure  of  those  who  prepared 
us  in  English  literature  and  in  geometry  and  differential  cal- 
culus, but  there  stands  out  in  my  mind  tonight  as  I  think  of 
my  college  course  the  figure  of  one  who  was  the  noblest  Grecian 
of  them  all,  (applause)  who  more  than  any  other  member 
of  the  faculty  inspired  reverence  in  his  class  room,  reverence 
when  he  took  the  service  in  chapel,  reverence  when  we  walked 
with  awful  steps  into  his  august  presence ;  and  yet  he  did  not 
give  us,  I  presume,  any  particular  information  that  we  have 
used  since,  nor  did  he  give  us  anything  that  seems  to  have 
much  connection  with  modern  life,  though  to  me  it  has  a  real 

42 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

connection.  You  know  it  is  a  curious  thing.  Training  hasn't 
much  relation  as  a  rule  to  the  thing  you  are  trying  to  do.  If 
you  were  ever  in  a  flat  and  listened  to  somebody  above  you 
playing  the  scale  on  a  piano  you  did  not  see  much  reference 
to  the  symphony  that  you  pay  two  dollars  to  go  and  listen 
to  in  a  music  hall,  and  yet  we  all  know  that  it  is  the  discipline 
of  the  scale  that  makes  the  accurate  musician.  And  so  I 
believe  in  this  case  it  was  a  love  for  truth,  and  insistence 
upon  accuracy  in  phrase  and  thought  and  expression,  and 
refusal  to  allow  us  to  be  slovenly  in  the  rendering  of  a  recita- 
tion or  in  the  way  we  conducted  ourselves  in  the  recitation 
room  that  impressed  us ;  it  was  to  my  mind  the  love  of  truth 
for  truth's  sake,  not  the  love  of  truth  because  we  were  going 
to  make  a  few  dimes  by  it,  not  the  love  of  truth  because  we 
were  going  to  build  a  concrete  dam  by  it,  not  the  love  of  truth 
because  we  were  going  to  be  promoted  over  our  fellow  men 
by  it,  but  the  love  of  truth  because  truth  is  beautiful,  and 
because  truth  is  truth,  and  because  all  error  is  abominable, 
as  we  were  told  on  many  occasions  when  we  made  errors.  I 
believe  that  every  person  who  attended  Union  and  was  privi- 
leged to  be  under  the  instruction  of  Henry  Whitehorne  knows 
in  the  bottom  of  his  heart  that  it  was  the  classical  training 
that  he  received  that  compelled  him  in  after  life  to  try  to  be 
true  to  fact,  and  in  the  presentation  of  truth,  whatever  he 
did,  not  to  be  slovenly.     (Applause.) 

In  my  gratitude  to  old  Union,  and  in  my  embarrassment 
that  I  feel  in  the  position  that  I  occupy  as  a  member  of  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  I  am  reminded  of  what  he  said  to  a  brother  of 
mine  who  was  the  student  of  the  family — I  was  not ;  he  said 
to  him,  "You  know  your  brother  got  along  fairly  well  in  col- 
lege but  he  would  not  have  done  anything  at  all  if  he  had  not 
been  in  a  class  that  made  him  do  it."  (Laughter.)  So,  it 
appears,  what  I  do  not  owe  to  Professor  Whitehorne  I  owe 
to  the  class  of  '87  because  of  its  unusual  temper  and  quality ; 
and  I  never  disputed  anything  the  dear  old  man  said;  if  he 

48 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

said  it  it  must  be  so.  And  I  wish  tonight  in  speaking  to  the 
Alpha  Chapter  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  to  lay  a  flower  upon  the 
tomb  of  one  whom  I  have  never  forgotten  and  whose  memory 
is  as  fresh  to  me  today  as  it  was  the  day  when  he  said  to  our 
class,  "Get  out  of  here,  all  of  you.  What  do  you  know  about 
Greek?"  And  therefore  what  little  I  can  contribute  to  this 
occasion  I  wish  to  contribute  by  way  of  a  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  the  one  who,  to  my  mind,  was  the  best  and  the 
truest  instructor  I  ever  had.     (Applause.) 

Dr.  Duane:  The  next  speaker  that  I  am  going  to  call 
will  give  you  an  occasional  poem.  Perhaps  you  think  that 
by  that  I  mean  he  makes  a  poem  once  every  one  hundred 
years.  If  so  you  haven't  caught  the  professional  use  of 
words,  and  I  must  tell  you  that  when  you  are  dealing  with 
professors  you  have  to  be  very  careful  in  the  use  of  words. 
You  know  one  professor — I  won't  say  who  it  was — that 
was  caught  once  by  his  wife  kissing  the  cook,  when  she 
exclaimed  in  her  indignation,  "Professor,  I  am  surprised," 
said  with  some  irritation,  "Maria,  I  wish  you  would 
ever  learn  the  use  of  terms.  I  am  surprised;  you  are  aston- 
ished." The  occasional  poem,  I  must  tell  you,  is  one  that 
is  produced  on  occasions,  and  the  occasions  may  recur,  for 
all  we  know,  every  minute ;  at  least  we  hope  they  may  recur 
very  often  with  the  gentleman  whom  I  now  present.  Pro- 
fessor John  F.  Genung  of  Amherst  College,  loyal  son  of 
Union,  scholar  and  poet.     (Applause). 

Professor  Genung:  Dr.  Alexander**  reminiscences  yes- 
terday of  a  similar  celebration  at  Harvard  University  on 
the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  their  Alpha  renewed  in  me 
the  pessimism  that  I  felt  on  being  asked  to  write  some 
verses  for  this  occasion  when  he  mentioned  poets  whose 
names  have  become  national,  who  have  been  identified  with 
Phi  Beta  Kappa — such   men   as   Oliver  Wendell   Holmes, 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  and  he  might  have  gone  on  to  men- 
tion Henry  W.  Longfellow,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and 
James  Russell  Lowell  among  other  names  that  have  become 
in  some  way  identified  with  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  And  then  to 
be  called  on,  one  who  has  never  professed  to  be  a  poet  and 
who  has  never  written  poems  to  amount  to  anything,  as  I 
say  renewed  in  me  that  sense  of  pessimism. 

A  Muse  That  Would  Not  Be  Amusing. 

I 

When  Brother  Bennett  laid  his  bland  behest 
On  me,  that  I  a  stunt  in  verse  should  try, 

I  prayed  my  Muse, — the  custom  in  such  quest ; 

She  merely  frowned  and  sulked,  and  said  "Oh<?>n" 

II 

But  something  must  be  done,  and  she  must  aid, 
And  if  she  was  perverse,  how  should  I  treat  her? 
I  mauled  and  thumped,  stern  usage  I  essayed, 
In  the  mistaken  thought  that  I  must  ftijra. 

ni 

All  to  no  purpose;  so  I  pondered  lone 

How  I  by  silly  flatteries  could  entrap  her; 

I  wheedled  her  as  goddess  to  a  throne, 

I  meant  to  crown  her, — I  could  only  udnTra. 

IV. 

Alas!  my  foolscap  proved  a  handicap. 

So  sad  the  task  to  give  poetic  feet  ease ; 
To  put  in  rhyme,  believe  me,  is  no  snap, 

V 

Perhaps  my  choice  was  wrong ;  I  had  called  Thalia, 
And  to  her  sportive  mood  my  suit  was  treason. 

<^iKoGocpia  bids  for  something  higher; 
If  not  to  rhyme,  she  may  respond  to   reason. 

45 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

VI 

Melpomene's   the  girl,   she   takes   the   trick, 
For  she  has  sway  o'er  rhyme  and  reason  too; 

Sometimes,  indeed,  she's  tragic,  for  she'll  stick 
At  naught  that  human  wit  can  dare  and  do. 

VII 

So  I  transferred  my  plea  to  her,  and  found 

At  once,  with  wonder,  that  my  theme  ran  clear; 

Her  sinewy  song  has  a  familiar  sound, — 
Alpha  has  sung  it  for  a  hundred  year. 

VIII 

Think  of  the  throng  to  whom  through  all  that  time 

Philosophy  has  been  the  guide  of  life — 
That  goodly  company  who  in  prose  or  rhyme 

Have  sought  life's  highest  values  far  from  strife. 

IX 

If  Alpha  could  extend  her  alphabet 

World-wide,  world-deep,  to  Omega,  how  soon 

These  crazy  wars  would  cease ! — But  no,  for  yet 
The  dawning  light  must  broaden  into  noon, 

X 

When  in  full  blaze  the  sun  of  Truth  shall  shine. 
And  Freedom's  music  peal  o'er  land  and  main, 

When  every  sister  of  the  tuneful  Nine 

Shall  win  her  realm,  and  noblest  suffrage  gain. 

XI 

Our  century  is  closing  on  a  dawn 

Whereon  thick  clouds  have  gathered ;  our  fair  world 
Of  earth  and  sea  and  air  with  death  is  strawn. 

And  through  the  gloom  fierce  bolts  of  hate  are  hurled. 


46 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

XII 

But  a  new  century  opens.     Stately  forms 

Of  God's  great  purposes  glimpse  in  the  strife, 
And  Peace,  the  fairer  for  the  weathered  storms, 
Shall  bring  to  birth  a  larger,  richer  life. 

XIII 

Life  longs  for  light,  for  cloudless  truth  and  love ; 

Forethought  she  craves  for  whatsoe'er  betide. 
She  seeks  the  Wisdom  that  is  from  above ; — 

Nor  vain  her  quest,  if  she  will  trust  her  Guide, 

XIV 

Our  Guide,  whose  hoary  years  declare  her  leal, 
Wliile  she  in  labyrinths  of  mind  has  wrought. 

Leading  from  shadowy  fancies  to  the  real, 

From  idle  glamours  to  the  wealths  of  thought. 

(Applause.) 

Dr.  Duane  :  I  am  now  going  to  call  upon  a  doctor.  Now, 
there  are  doctors  and  doctors.  There  is  the  doctor  of  medi- 
cine whose  mistakes  the  earth  is  said  to  cover.  Then  there  is 
the  doctor  of  philosophy.  His  characteristics  were  well 
described  by  one  of  the  guild  who  said  once  that  after  getting 
his  degree,  which  he  thought  was  a  very  fine  one,  he  went 
to  Chicago  and,  while  studying  there,  happened  to  occupy  a 
house  that  had  been  occupied  by  an  M.  D.  One  night  at 
midnight  he  was  awakened  by  a  clatter  at  the  door  and 
sounds  from  below,  like  this:  "I  want  to  get  in."  "What  do 
you  want  to  get  in  for?"  "I  want  to  see  the  doctor."  "Oh,  go 
on ;  he  isn't  the  kind  of  doctor  that  would  do  anybody  any 
good."  Now  the  doctor  I  am  going  to  call  upon  is  cer- 
tainly not  one  whose  mistakes  the  earth  covers.  And  surely 
I  will  not  say  of  him  that  he  is  of  the  kind  that  will  not  do 
anybody  any  good.     He  is  one  who  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa  has 

4T 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

rendered  a  faithful,  laborious  and  valuable  service.  I  call  on 
Doctor  Oscar  M.  Voorhees,  the  secretary  of  the  United 
Chapters. 

Dr.  Voohees:  Mr.  Toastmaster  and  fellow  members  of 
the  Phi  Beta  Kappa: 

I  am  glad  indeed  to  have  a  part  in  this  centennial  celebra- 
tion, of  which,  I  am  sure,  v/c  Dhall  all  Irave  a  very  pleasant 
recollection.  I  am  here  as  the  representative  of  the  central 
office  who  has  a  work  to  d(.  of  which  most  of  you  know  little, 
and  about  which  you  are  not  especially  anxious  to  hear,  and 
yet  concorning  which  every  member  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
should  know  something. 

The  United  Chapters  as  an  organization  dates  back  to 
1883,  and  the  methods  of  the  organization  were  then  de- 
termined by  the  necessities  of  the  case.  At  that  time  the 
most  pressing  problem  was  the  matter  of  expansion.  The 
question  had  become  acute  because  the  Union  Chapter  de- 
layed action  on  an  application  in  behalf  of  Cornell.  The 
Harvard  Chapter  was  then  appealed  to,  and  was  of  a  mind 
to  take  favorable  action,  but  doubted  its  own  authority,  as 
this  was  deemed  to  rest  in  the  Alpha  of  New  York.  The 
larger  question  of  the  relation  of  the  chapters  was  dis- 
cussed, and  the  necessity  of  some  form  of  union  became  ap- 
parent. The  outcome  was  a  fraternity  convention  in  con- 
nection with  the  centennial  of  the  Harvard  Chapter,  held 
August  1st,  1881,  and  in  the  end  the  organization  of  the 
United  Chapters  in  1883. 

The  constitution  devolved  large  responsibility  upon  the 
secretary  of  the  general  organization.  In  his  office  all  the 
records  are  kept.  Correspondence  with  applicants  is  in  his 
hands,  and  he  must  arrange  for  the  meeting  of  the  Senate 
and  Council.  During  the  fifteen  years  that  I  have  served  in 
this  capacity  thirty-nine  chapters  have  come  into  being,  and 
the  secretary  has  arranged  for  the  organization  of  them 

48 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

all.  All  new  members  are  registered  in  his  office ;  there  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Key  is  edited,  and  efforts  for  the  co- 
ordination of  chapter  activities  have  their  inception.  The 
work  is  constantly  growing,  and  must  continue  to  grow. 

Methods  were  much  simpler  one  hundred  years  ago  when 
the  fifth  branch  of  the  society  was  organized  at  Union. 
Some  conditions  peculiar  to  the  time  are  worthy  of  mention. 
Dr.  Duane  has  told  you  of  the  Revolutionary  conditions  under 
which  Phi  Beta  Kappa  came  into  being.  The  spirit  of  patri- 
otism in  the  air  had  its  influence  upon  the  students  at  William 
and  Mary  and  led  them  to  think  of  what  they  might  do  for 
their  country.  So  it  was  during  the  war  of  1812  that  the 
first  steps  were  taken  looking  to  the  organization  of  this 
chapter.  It  was  in  1813  that  thirteen  Union  students  made 
application  for  the  charter  which  was  later  granted.  In 
taking  this  step  they  sought  the  consent  of  Doctor  Eliphalet 
Nott,  the  president,  and  in  the  records  of  the  Yale  Chapter 
you  will  find  a  copy  of  their  letter  with  Doctor  Nott's  en- 
dorsement and  attestation  of  the  high  character  of  the  young 
men  who  then,  in  the  midst  of  war,  with  patriotic  as  well  as 
scholastic  intent,  sought  a  charter  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  for 
Union  College. 

Dartmouth  and  Plarvard  quite  promptly  voted  in  favor  of 
granting  the  application.  Yale  took  a  little  longer,  more 
than  three  years  in  fact,  and  when  she  did  pass  favorably 
upon  it,  the  young  men  who  had  signed  the  application  had 
been  graduated  and  consequently  were  not  in  a  position  to 
receive  it.  So  the  Yale  Chapter  looked  around  and  found 
three  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  of  years  and  experience  to  whom 
the  charter  was  entrusted.  Their  leader  was  James  Kent, 
Yale,  1794,  Chancellor  of  the  State  of  New  York,  who  became 
even  more  distinguished  in  later  years  than  he  was  then.*  He 
and  two  others,  one  a  clergyman  in  Albany,  and  the  other  a 

♦See  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Key,  Vol.  1,  No.  3. 

49 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

professor  in  Union  College,  received  the  charter  and  organized 
the  chapter,  and  the  first  thing  they  did  was  to  elect  President 
Nott  and  several  other  distinguished  men  as  foundation 
members ;  and  the  first  thing  that  the  foundation  members 
did  after  being  initiated  was  to  elect  President  Nott  the  first 
president  of  the  chapter. 

Thus  the  destinies  of  the  Alpha  of  New  York  were,  at  the 
beginning,  placed  in  the  hands,  not  of  undergraduates,  but 
of  distinguished  administrators  who  had  attained  wisdom  by 
experience,  and  who  had  a  broader  vision,  perhaps,  than 
some  others  of  what  Phi  Beta  Kappa  might  become.  I  believe 
that  this  placing  of  the  destinies  of  the  Alpha  of  New  York 
in  the  hands  of  these  men  of  years  and  experience  had  a 
large  influence  on  the  development  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  As 
Doctor  Aleander  so  happily  stated  yesterday  it  lifted  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  out  of  the  provincialism  of  New  England  and 
gave  it  a  national  character.  Then  followed  the  election  of 
nearly  one  hundred  honorary  members,  some  of  whom  were 
mentioned  by  Professor  Bennett  yesterday,  men  in  the  active 
walks  of  life  in  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  the  Carolinas  and 
Georgia,  as  well  as  distinguished  men  of  New  York.  By 
this  means  Phi  Beta  Kappa  membership  became  more  widely 
disseminated,  the  society  more  generally  known,  and  a  broad 
foundation  was  laid  for  the  future  in  which  we  share  today. 
It  is  especially  fitting  that  this  contribution  of  the  Union 
Chapter  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa's  development  should  be  re- 
called on  this  occasion. 

There  is  another  fact  of  importance  to  which  reference  has 
not  hitherto  been  made.  This  chapter  exerted  quite  a  de- 
cided influence  in  the  organization  of  the  United  Chapters, 
and  it  exerted  that  influence  largely  through  John  A.  De 
Remer.  There  are  those  who  will  recall  him.  I  first  met  him 
at  the  council  of  1901,  over  which  he  presided.  I  recall  his 
courtliness,  his  grace,  his  dignity.     These  qualities  were  es- 

50 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

pecially  appropriate,  for  the  council  met  in  the  Court  of  Ap- 
peals room  in  Saratoga  Springs.  The  intercourse  I  had  with 
him  afterward,  when  he  was  preident  and  I  was  secretary, 
confirmed  those  early  impressions.  Mr.  De  Remer  was  chosen 
to  attend  the  Harvard  Centennial  in  1881  and  the  subse- 
quent meetings  that  resulted  in  the  organization  of  the 
United  Chapters.  He  was  present  at  them  all,  I  think ;  was 
chosen  a  senator  at  the  organiaztion  of  the  United  Chapters ; 
was  elected  vice-president;  and  then  served  as  president  un- 
til his  death.  This  influence  of  Mr.  De  Remer,  as  represen- 
tative of  the  Alpha  of  New  York,  is  especially  worthy  of 
mention  at  this  time;  and  his  influence  on  the  development 
of  the  United  Chapters  should  not  be  forgotten  by  this 
chapter. 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  occupies  a  very  remarkable  position  in 
the  educational  world  today.  There  is  no  other  organization 
that  approaches  it.  Its  reputation  is  largely  due  to  the  high 
character  and  the  distinguished  activities  of  the  men  and 
women  who  have  had  the  privilege  of  wearing  the  golden  key. 
The  reputation  of  its  members,  following  scholarly  attain- 
ments while  in  college,  has  given  Phi  Beta  Kappa  its  present 
unique  position;  and  that  reputation  will  not  decline,  I  am 
sure,  so  long  as  high  ideals  of  service  are  kept  before  its 
growing  membership.  In  every  walk  of  life  where  worthy 
service  is  being  rendered  we  find  our  Phi  Beta  Kappa  mem- 
bers in  earnest  leadership.  At  times  we  may  agree  with  them ; 
at  other  times  we  may  not.  There  may  be  differences  of  re- 
ligious views  or  philosophical  conceptions,  as  represented 
here  this  evening,  but  these  do  not  interfere  when  service  is 
the  touchstone.  A  deeper  interest  and  wider  fraternity  helps 
correlate  the  varied  efforts  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  and 
women. 

We  all  recall  how  a  few  years  ago  three  valiant  soldiers,  all 
members  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  were  in  the  Federal  arena,  each 

51 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

one  trying  to  make  the  country  believe  that  his  method  of 
bringing  the  millennum  ought  to  be  accepted.  Our  distin- 
guished and  weighty  brother,  who  has  just  spoken,  was  one  of 
the  three.  He  represented  Yale.  Theodore  Roosevelt  from 
Harvard  was  the  second,  and  the  third,  Woodrow  Wilson, 
that  scholarly  man  from  Princeton,  who  received  his  Phi 
Beta  key  at  Wesleyan,  won  out  in  that  triangular  contest. 
Those  of  us  who  knew  the  situation  did  not  worry  much  re- 
specting the  outcome  for  we  knew  that  whatever  the  result  a 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  man  would  occupy  the  presidential  chair.  A 
similar  situation  presented  itself  last  fall,  and  we  knew  that 
Mr.  Hughes,  if  he  won,  would  carry  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  key 
with  him  into  the  White  House  as  he  carried  it  all  through  the 
contest.  So  it  was  with  the  vice-presidential  candidates ;  both 
the  Republican  and  Democratic  candidates  were  members  of 
Phi  Beta  Kappa. 

I  could  mention  many  distinguished  names  on  our  roll,  but 
that  is  not  necessary.  I  will  say  only  this  in  addition,  that 
Union  has  furnished  two  Phi  Beta  Kappa  presidents,  and  in 
this  respect  rivals  Harvard.  Harvard  furnished  John 
Quincy  Adams  and  Theodore  Roosevelt.  Union  furnished 
Martin  Van  Buren  and  Chester  A.  Arthur.  I  am  of 
the  opinion  that  most  Union  men  have  forgotten  that 
Martin  Van  Buren  was  ever  elected  to  membership  in 
this  chapter,  but  this  is  a  fact;  and  hence  you  have  the 
honor  of  having  furnished  two  presidents  of  the  United 
States.  How  many  more  you  will  furnish  in  the  years  to 
come  who  can  say?  (Applause.) 

There  is  one  important  fact  that  I  should  like  to  mention, 
and  that  is  that  our  first  Phi  Beta  Kappa  president  was 
really  the  author  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  for  you  all  know 
that  John  Quincy  Adams  had  much  to  do  with  that  important 
document.  Our  present  Phi  Beta  Kappa  president  has  pro- 
posed a  Monroe  Doctrine  for  the  world,  and  it  may  not  be 

52 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

beyond  the  lifetime  of  some  of  us  when  this  great  idea,  that 
has  been  incorporated  in  recent  state  papers,  shall  become  a 
a  basal  principle  in  the  diplomacy  of  the  world.  At  any 
rate,  whatever  the  outcome  may  be,  we  know  that  the  hands 
that  have  penned  some  of  these  great  documents  are  of  men 
^\ho  have  been  proud  to  call  themselves  members  of  our 
fraternity. 

This  occasion  will  long  be  remembered.  One  hundred 
years  is  a  long  period,  and  yet  in  world  history  it  is  a  com- 
paratively brief  time.  For  an  organization  of  this  sort  it 
is  an  important  period.  Very  few  chapters,  only  three  in  fact, 
have  had  the  privilege  of  celebrating  such  an  event.  All  who 
are  here  will  be  very  glad,  I  am  sure,  to  possess  a  report  of 
these  proceedings.  I  trust  you  will  be  equally  interested  to 
know  what  is  going  on  in  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  world. 

I  have  here  a  copy  of  the  book  entitled  Representative 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Orations  which  was  edited  by  Professor 
Clark  S.  Northup  of  Cornell,  one  of  our  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
senators.  In  it  have  been  gathered  together  twenty-six  rep- 
resentative orations,  beginning  in  the  early  days  and  coming 
down  to  the  present  time.  The  last  one  was  by  Professor 
Paul  Shorey,  delivered  in  1910,  and  the  one  just  preceding 
was  by  Woodrow  Wilson,  delivered  a  year  earlier  when  he 
was  Governor  of  New  Jersey.  It  would  be  easy  to  assemble 
material  for  half  a  dozen  similar  volumes  of  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  orations,  and  I  am  sure,  that  when  the  next  volume 
is  published  you  will  want  to  see  included  the  forceful  and 
appropriate  oration  that  was  delivered  yesterday  by  Doctor 
Alexander.     (Applause.) 

There  is  one  further  line  of  development  in  which  I  trust 
you  will  all  be  interested.  We  are  hoping  one  of  these  days 
to  have  suitable  Phi  Beta  Kappa  headquarters.  During  the 
fifteen  years  that  I  have  served  the  fraternity  as  general 
secretary  the  headquarters  of  the  United    Chapters    have 

53 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

been  in  my  study,  furnished  gratutiously  by  the  congrega- 
tions that  I  have  served.  This  you  will  recognize  as  en- 
tirely anomalous.  Phi  Beta  Kappa  has  been  at  no  charge 
for  light  or  heat  or  for  other  overhead  expenses  until  recent- 
ly. It  has  received  these  things  gratutiously.  For  an  organiza- 
tion of  over  thirty-two  thousand  members  this  seems  not 
entirely  appropriate.  Not  that  I  or  my  congregations  have 
thought  of  asking  anything  in  the  way  of  rental.  The  serv- 
ice has  been  granted  cheerfully.  The  conditions  have  re- 
mained thus  because  the  matter  has  never  been  brought  with 
sufficient  force  to  the  attention  of  the  fraternity.  I  have 
spoken  of  it  in  my  reports  to  the  last  few  councils,  and  as 
a  result  a  member  living  in  New  York  has  made  an  offer  of 
$25,000  toward  a  headquarters  endowment  fund  of  $100,000, 
provided  the  balance,  $75,000,  be  raised  during  the  current 
year.  The  income  of  the  fund  is  to  be  used  to  maintain 
suitable  headquarters  in  the  City  of  New  York.  I  trust 
that  enough  Union  men  will  be  interested  to  help  the  fund 
along,  and  that  you  will  do  your  share  to  help  provide  a 
place  where  the  work  of  the  central  office  may  be  done  more 
efficiently,  and  where  members  who  visit  the  city  may  come 
to  examine  the  treasures  that  will  be  displayed  there.  If 
we  could  assemble  the  portraits  of  the  distinguished  mem- 
bers, men  and  women,  the  members  of  the  Senate,  those 
who  have  delivered  orations,  and  others  who  have  attained 
prominence,  we  should  have  a  worthy  collection  indeed.  If 
we  could  get  together  copies  of  all  books  published  by  our 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  members  we  should  indeed  have  a  remarkable 
library.  When  we  have  room  to  display  other  treasures 
and  memorabilia,  which  we  know  to  be  available,  we  shall 
have  an  exhibit  of  far-reaching  interest.  Why  should  not 
this  be  done?    It  must  be  done. 

I  believe  that  the  time  has  come  to  make  a  beginning,  and 
I  hope  that,  when  I  shall  have  finished  my  work  at  the 
end  of  this  triennium,  I  shall  be  privileged  to  pass  it  over 

54i 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

to  a  successor  better  able  to  carry  it  on  than  I  have  been, 
and  that  he  will  have  a  suitable  office  in  which  to  do  his 
work,  so  that  Phi  Beta  Kappa  will  no  longer  be  an  almoner 
of  the  bounty  of  some  church  or  congregation  but  will  be 
properly  housed  and  in  a  position  to  foster  a  worthy  life 
in  all  the  chapters  of  our  beloved  fraternity.   (Applause.) 

Dr.  Duane:  Gentlemen,  the  last  speaker  I  shall  present 
to  you  is  one  whom  I  know  you  will  all  be  very  glad  to  hear, 
one  whom  I  have  reserved  for  the  last  because  I  thought 
that  we  should  have  the  best  at  the  last.  I  call  on  one  who 
has  presided  for  years  over  the  destinies  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  presided  with  dignity,  efficiency,  to  the  satisfaction 
of  all.  Doctor  Grosvenor,  president  of  the  United  Chapters 
of  Phi  Beta  Kappa.     (Applause.) 

Dr.  Grovesnor  (in  part)  :  Mr.  President  and  fellow 
members  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa: 

Permit  me  at  the  very  beginning,  because  there  are  so 
many  things  which  I  wish  to  speak  upon  and  at  the  same 
time  I  do  not  want  to  tax  your  patience  too  greatly,  to 
refer  to  my  dear  friend  and  associate  and  colleague,  Doctor 
Voorhees.  No  words  of  mine  can  pay  the  tribute  that  is 
his  due  for  his  efficiency,  his  ability,  his  energy  and  his 
devotion.  No  man  in  the  history  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  has 
rivaled  the  work  which  he  has  done  for  this  organization. 
It  has  been  constant,  unremitting;  and  he  has  given  not  only 
of  his  time  and  of  his  labor  and  of  his  thought  but  he  has 
made  his  home,  that  pastor's  study,  the  study  of  a  busy 
pastor  in  the  Metropolitan  district,  the  headquarters  of  this 
fraternity.  Men  may  come  and  men  may  go;  presidents 
are  only  inferior  spokes  in  a  revolving  wheel;  the  necessity 
of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  is  that  one  should  be  at  the  real  head 
like  my  dear  friend,  Doctor  Voorhees. 

65 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

It  is  my  distinguished  honor  on  behalf  of  the  eighty-eight 
other  chapters  to  bring  to  the  Alpha  of  New  York  con- 
gratulations on  this  great  and  memorable  occasion.  I  never 
feel  so  humble  as  when  I  rise  on  an  occasion  like  this,  repre- 
senting the  office  that  I  hold,  because  the  president  speaks 
from  his  official  position  with  the  significance,  with  the  com- 
prehensiveness, that  cannot  attach  to  any  other  officer,  and 
I  know  that  from  the  gates  of  California  to  the  coast  of 
Maine,  way  down  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  up  to  the  shores 
of  the  neighboring  Dominion  of  Canada  the  congratulations 
are  hearty  and  sincere,  and  in  those  congratulations  we  take 
delight  and  pride. 

************ 

And  now  for  reminiscences.  I  graduated  long,  long  ago 
from  Amherst  College,  and  in  the  Amherst  College  of  my 
day  there  was  a  romantic  interest  attaching  to  the  very 
name  of  Union  which  we  felt  for  hardly  any  other  institution 
in  the  country.  I  do  not  know  why  it  is  that  Union  held 
that  place  which  it  occupied  as  a  dispensary  of  blessings 
over  the  land  in  the  foundation  of  fraternities,  inasmuch 
as  so  many  of  them  were  first  born  here,  and  as  the  dis- 
pensary of  chapters  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa ;  I  do  not  know  what 
there  is  in  your  circumstances,  in  your  environment,  what 
there  is  in  the  spirit  of  this  institution;  but  Union  has  had 
a  larger  influence  than  any  other  college  in  the  country  in 
disseminating  Phi  Beta  Kappa  and  Phi  Beta  Kappa  prin- 
ciples and  then  in  stimulating  those  fraternal  bonds  which 
were  so  strong  in  the  fraternities  and  in  these  later  days 
are  so  strong  in  the  sororities ;  and  I  come  here  wearing  for 
the  first  time  in  the  presence  of  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  gather- 
ing my  Psi  Upsilon  badge.  In  Amherst  we  sang  that  song 
"A  solid  rock  on  which  to  build" ;  and  again  we  sang  a  song 
"From  distant  Union's  classic  hills."  There  was,  as  I  say, 
in  the  name  of  Union  College  something  that  stimulated 
and  that  inspired. 

56 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

And  then  there  was  the  wonderful  career  of  your  il- 
lustrious Doctor  Nott,  a  man  who  was  human  above  every- 
thing else,  and  the  humanities  are  the  foundation  and  the 
hope  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  I  wonder  whether  in  the  history 
of  this  institution  there  has  been  any  other  college  presi- 
dent who  has  had  such  an  opportunity  and  has  used  that  op- 
portunity so  well. 

With  another  Union  president  I  had  intellectual  relations 
which  came  very  near  defeating  me  at  a  prior  period  of  my 
life.  There  were  ten  or  twelve  candidates  for  appointment 
to  Robert  College,  Constantinople,  I  among  them.  The 
argument  was  brought  up  at  the  meeting  of  the  trustees  of 
that  respected  institution  that  no  man  from  Amherst  was 
fit  to  be  sent  abroad  because  he  was  sure  to  be  filled  with 
the  Hickokian  philosophy.  Doctor  Hickok,  shortly  after- 
ward 3^our  president,  then  a  teacher  in  the  philosophical  de- 
partment, a  writer  of  many  works,  afterwards  came  to 
Amherst.  He  ended  his  days  there,  I  think,  in  the  home 
that  afterwards  was  in  the  possession  of  my  beloved  and 
reverend  friend,  Professor  Genung,  whose  delightful  and 
stimulating  poem  to-night  we  have  listened  to  with  so  much 
pleasure.  But  one  gentleman  on  this  board  of  trustees  said, 
"I  never  knew  of  a  college  student  who  came  out  from  his 
alma  mater  filled  with  philosophy  that  did  not  get  entirely 
over  it  in  the  space  of  six  months,  and  Mr.  Grovesnor,  I 
imagine,  will  prove  no  exception  to  that."  At  any  rate, 
despite  this  one  association  with  Union  that  might  have 
worked  to  my  detriment,  nevertheless  I  was  appointed. 

The  pleasure  which  I  have  had  to-day  I  can  hardly  ex- 
press. I  want  to  thank  you,  sir  (Dr.  Duane),  for  your 
delicate  and  constant  courtly  kindness  and  attention  to  me 
during  the  time  that  I  have  been  here.  The  pleasure  that 
I  have  had  in  grasping  hands  and  then  in  wandering 
through  these  almost  unrivaled  scenes !  One  scene  at  least 
is  without  a  peer  in  my  experience,  and  that  is  the  Jackson 

67 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

Garden,  as  you  call  it;  but  the  garden  that  stands  up 
in  my  memory  and  will  stand  up  forever  is  the  loveliest  spot 
I  ever  saw  upon  this  earth,  over  which  I  have  traveled  widely, 
in  the  combination  of  nature  with  the  touch  of  art  and  of 
sympathy,  wherein  every  hand  that  was  put  upon  a  plant 
or  flower  seems  to  have  been  a  hand  of  love.  I  cannot  con- 
ceive under  the  face  of  God's  heaven  anything  more  exquisite 
than  that  indescribable,  ahnost  inconceivable,  except  as  you 
breathe  this  air  and  luxuriate  in  it,  I  cannot  conceive  of  any- 
thing more  exquisite,  more  celestial  than  that  wonderful 
spot. 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  was  born  in  a  storm.  It  was  born  in 
the  time  of  great  war.  *  *  *  *  Doctor  Voorhees  has  referred 
here  to  the  first  effort  that  was  made  to  establish  a  chapter  at 
Union,  again  under  that  stimulus;  and  after  all,  despite 
its  horrors,  there  is  nothing  that  so  stimulates,  so  exalts 
the  mind  and  so  appeals  to  the  spirit  of  imagination  in 
youth  as  does  contest,  and  the  greater  the  contest  the 
greater  the  longing  of  the  young  men,  like  that  youthful 
Roman,  Horatius  Codes,  to  throw  themselves  into  the  abyss 
and  to  save  their  city  and  save  their  land  and  to  save  their 
honor.  We  are  at  a  time  like  that  to-day.  *  *  *  *  And  there 
has  been  no  deterioration.  Let  us  not  dream  of  the  golden 
days  when  we  have  the  golden  present.  Let  us  not  think  of  the 
scenes  into  which  young  men  flung  themselves  in  the  devo- 
tion of  Nathan  Hale  as  something  that  is  extinct.  As  young 
men  flock  to  the  feast,  so  young  men,  and  above  all  college 
young  men  fling  themselves  at  the  call  of  their  country. 
The  last  college  fraternity  gathering  that  I  attended  was 
last  Tuesday  evening  at  our  chapter  house  of  the  Psi 
Upsilon  fraternity  in  Amherst.  Seventeen  were  present. 
Twenty-seven  had  already  gone  and  five  were  to  leave  with 
the  Amherst  unit  on  the  following  Saturday.  Here  at 
Union  I  went  into  the  chapter  house  of  my  fraternity  with 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

the  reverence  of  a  pilgrim.  It  is  in  the  same  place  where  a 
few  struck  out  the  spark  from  which  our  chapter  has  been 
inflamed,  our  chapters  of  my  fraternity  have  been  inflamed, 
and  they  took  me  into  the  dining  room;  twenty-four  seats 
at  one  long  table,  one  at  the  end  shorter;  and  they  said, 
"They  have  all  gone  from  that  table.  There  are  none  sitting 
there  where  the  ten  were."  They  pointed  to  the  other  table 
and  they  said,  "They  have  all  gone  but  the  seven  of  us  that 
remain  here."  And  so  they  have  gone  out,  and,  thank  God, 
that  is  the  story  this  whole  country  over.  There  is  no 
monopoly  by  the  Alpha  of  New  York.  There  is  no  monopoly 
by  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  There  is  no  monopoly  even  by  the 
colleges  and  universities  of  the  country  of  young  men  and 
young  devotion  and  other  sacrifice. 

We  are  in  the  midst  of  this  war.  We  shrank  from  it. 
We  endured  wrong  and  outrage  and  insult  and  we  still  hoped 
and  waited.  Our  long-suffering  president  was  derided 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Republic  for 
poltroonery,  and  the  vast  majority  of  the  American  people 
stood  with  him.  Nothing,  nothing,  nothing  but  the  utmost 
shame  and  dishonor  should  plunge  us  over  the  precipice 
into  the  hell  of  war.  And  at  last,  at  last  we  plunged  in.  I 
went  out  to  Illinois,  to  Indiana  and  visited  several  colleges 
in  the  West  during  the  months  of  February  and  January 
of  this  year,  and  I  hardly  found  a  single  person  who  did  not 
feel  that  peace  with  dishonor  was  preferable  to  war  in 
behalf  of  that  which  we  call  honor.  But  when  at  last  in 
ringing  language  that  will  echo  as  long  as  time  endures  the 
President  of  the  United  States  came  forward  on  April  2nd, 
then  the  whole  nation  stood  with  him,  and  there  has  been  no 
spectacle  in  American  history  of  such  unanimity  as  that 
which  exists  to-day.  I  said  something  about  politics  to 
President  Richmond  to-night.  "Oh,"  he  said,  "I  can't  think 
of  politics  now;  there  is  only  Americanism."  Perish  the 
Democratic  Party,  perish  the  Republican  Party,  the  Social- 

59 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

ist  Party,  any  party!  They  have  all  perished  and  there 
stands  out  the  majesty  of  a  united  people.  We  are  simply 
Americans,  Americans  all.  (Applause.)  In  that  strong 
demonstration  which  was  made  by  your  alumni  this  morning 
those  flags  had  the  significance  which  they  have  not  had 
since  1898,  and  even  in  1898  we  were  engaged  in  a  struggle 
that  was  relatively  bagatelle. 

In  all  human  history  there  never  has  been  an  hour  like 
the  present  hour,  even  as  there  never  has  been  such  marshall- 
ing of  forces  on  one  side  or  the  other.  On  one  side  a 
practically  united  world,  a  world  responsive  to  the  leadership 
of  the  President  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  people  of 
whom  he  is  the  chosen  representative.  From  farthest  China 
to  southern  South  America,  up  to  the  Arctic  circle,  every- 
where, except  in  that  stretch  of  land  from  the  Baltic  and 
the  North  Sea,  several  hundred  miles  long,  diagonally  across 
Europe,  bringing  in  the  effete  Austrian  Empire,  the  satellite 
Bulgarian,  only  waiting  to  decide  as  to  which  would  pay  the 
bigger  price  and  would  offer  the  larger  opportunity,  and 
then  through  the  unspeakable  Ottoman  Empire,  across  the 
Bosporus  and  the  Marmora,  through  the  devastated 
ridges  of  Asia  Minor,  through  Turkestan  and  Armenia, 
down  through  Mesopotamia  between  the  Tigris  and  the 
Euphrates,  all  dominated  by  imperialism  and  by  the  Prus- 
sian— not  the  German,  although  the  Germans  are  in- 
oculated with  the  virus — dominated  by  the  Prussian  autoc- 
racy and  militarism.  There  alone  is  the  black  spot  on  the 
world's  surface.  In  the  forces  that  believe  in  that  sublime 
sentence  uttered  by  a  great  Virginian,  and  carved  in  some- 
thing more  lasting  than  marble,  "Governments  derive  their 
just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed,"  and  re- 
peated again  by  another  great  American  in  messages  sent, 
the  last  of  them  all  to  Russia,  we  have  the  sum  of  the  prin- 
ciple for  which  one  side  fights. 

60 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

So  there  is  not  only  a  United  States  but  there  is  a  united 
world.  The  Ambassador  of  Argentine  told  me  at  a  gathering 
of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  not  long  ago  that,  when  the  President 
called  together  the  representatives  of  the  ABC  republics, 
for  the  first  time  South  America  began  to  believe  that  the 
great  republic  of  the  north  was  sincerely  her  friend,  and 
the  troops  of  Mexico  flocked  to  the  border  to  enter  the 
American  Army.  They  all  did.  We  came  into  the  struggle 
not  for  humanity  originally,  not  to  down  those  things  that 
we  detest  abroad,  but  first  of  all  to  maintain  our  own 
dignity  and  our  own  honor;  and  then  the  individual 
withers  and  the  world  is  more  and  more,  and  the 
advantage  of  the  United  States  and  the  interest  of  the 
United  States  and  the  mere  honor  of  the  United  States 
shrivels,  and  the  great  world  stands  up,  and  in  the  provi- 
dence of  God  the  United  States  of  America  is  the  cham- 
pion that  comes  when  France  is  bleeding  to  her  death, 
when  Great  Britain  is  almost  on  her  knees,  when  the  great 
giant  of  the  East,  released  from  his  prison,  is  staggering 
and  doubtful  in  the  light  that  beats  upon  him.  *  *  *  * 

We  fought  once  believing  that  we  would  not  submit  to 
an  authority  from  abroad,  and  when  we  flung  out  that 
flag,  as  you  flung  out  that  flag  to-day  so  splendidly  as 
it  unfolded  in  the  air  that  seemed  to  welcome  it,  we  did 
it  simply  for  ourselves.  We  had  no  thought  of  the  rest  of 
the  world.  Governments  derive  their  just  powers  from  the 
consent  of  the  governed  meant  simply  that  thirteen  in- 
significant clusters  of  colonists  along  the  Atlantic  would 
be  governed  by  themselves.  *  *  *  *  And  then  through  the 
years  we  have  gone  on  developing  until  we  stand  out  with 
fabulous  opportunities  and  with  fabulous  power,  and  the 
horizon  is  widened  and  widened  and  the  world  grown  bigger 
and  bigger,  and  in  God's  great  time  we  are  the  champions 
of  mankind.  The  first  battle  was  fought  last  Tuesday. 
Stupendous  victory !     Nothing  in  human  vision  had  ever 

61 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

beheld  such  a  scene,  when  at  over  fifty  thousand  different 
places,  with  small  disorder,  with  never  a  riot  except  from 
escaped  convicts  from  a  prison,  almost  ten  million  men,  the 
flower,  the  pride  of  manhood,  between  the  ages  of  twenty- 
one  and  thirty-one,  inscribed  their  names.  Protests  came 
from,  I  regret  to  say — I  regret  to  use  such  a  term  as 
college — protests  came  from  the  college,  the  Anti-im- 
perialistic League  and  from  some  members  of  the  United 
Workers  of  the  World  and  from  the  International  Workers 
of  the  World,  for  whom  I  can  have  some  compassion,  I 
can  have  some  sympathy;  but  I  cannot  express  adequately 
my  detestation  and  abhorrence  of  the  teachings  which 
young  men  and  young  women  had  received  in  colleges  and 
universities  that  prompted  them  in  their  youth,  their 
callow  inexperience,  to  accept  office  in  an  organization  so 
destitute  of  anything  like  an  appreciation  of  and  of  loyalty 
to  our  democratic  systems  of  administration  and  of  gov- 
ernment. Nevertheless  the  ten  million  mardiing  along 
to  the  designated  places  as  a  matter  of  fact,  without  any 
ceremony,  simply  as  a  matter  of  course — and  that  was  the 
attitude,  as  a  matter  of  course — and  putting  their  names 
down  knowing  that  they  were  to  go  forth  when  the  Presi- 
dent called  and  sacrifice  their  lives  in  the  trenches  or  on 
the  sea  or  in  the  air  was  a  scene  too  sublime  for  any  ex- 
pression in  words. 

And  now  comes  the  second  battle,  the  first  echo.  It  echoed 
to  the  throne  of  the  Kaiser  in  vibrations  of  the  air.  There 
was  the  manifestation  of  what  America  meant.  America, 
this  mighty,  this  gigantic,  conglomeration  of  all  natural  re- 
sources, of  all  the  capability  of  human  intellect  and  train- 
ing, in  all  the  majesty  of  youth,  was  slow  to  get  into  action, 
and  yet  was  resistless  when  once  in  motion.  And  now  comes 
this  second  battle;  and  that  is  the  battle  of  the  Liberty 
Loan.  Do  you  think  that  Herr  Zimmerman  and  his 
Excellency,  the  German  Chancellor,  and  his  Majesty,  the 

62 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

German  Emperor,  are  not  watching  whether  spontaneously 
the  Americans  will  spring  forward  from  their  thousands  of 
millions  of  accumulated  capital  and  constantly  increasing 
earnings  to  make  up  that  loan?  Will  it  be  said  on  June  15th 
that  the  American  people  have  responded,  that  in  the 
various  outer  sections  of  the  country  they  have  been  true 
to  the  unexampled  record  of  our  metropolitan  city  in  sub- 
scribing one  thousand  million  dollars,  not  thrown  away 
but  invested,  because  they  know  that  there  is  no  other 
credit  that  is  so  strong  as  the  credit  of  the  national  gov- 
ernment? Do  you  think,  when  that  is  flashed  abroad,  it 
will  not  be  like  the  sting  of  another  defeat? 

There  are  two  things  that  give  the  German  Emperor 
confidence,  confidence  that  is  mistaken,  confidence  never- 
theless by  which  we  can  believe  he  is  striving  to  buoy  up  his 
sinking  spirits  and  his  sinking  hopes  and  from  which  he 
would  derive  means  for  beguiling  still  longer  that  noble 
German  people  who  to-day  are  enemies  but  who,  we  hope, 
in  time  will  be  our  friends,  and  those  two  factors  are  the 
United  States  of  America  and  Russia.  For  the  first  I  have 
no  word  to  say.  We  have  our  own  judgment  and  we  know 
that  America  has  not  failed  in  a  crisis;  so  she  will  not  in 
a  greater  crisis.  We  know  that  she  has  pledged  the 
utmost  resources  of  the  Republic  to  carrying  to  a  successful 
issue  this  conflict.  Do  we  not  know  that  America  in  the 
hour  of  trial  will  be  true?  What  is  the  use  for  us  to  linger 
upon  that?  *  *  *  * 

And  then  comes  the  council  chamber  of  the  nations 
wherein  we  sit  not  as  mere  spectators,  not  as  mere  mem- 
bers invited  by  courtesy  to  express  our  opinions.  *  *  *  *  And 
then  the  fruition,  politically  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth, 
the  triumph  of  principles.  *  *  *  *  And  then,  when  the  time 
comes  that  the  sub-nation,  the  small  as  well  as  the  great,  is  to 
have  justice  done,  and  each  nation  is  to  be  ruled  by  those 
whom  it  prefers,  perhaps  not  ruled  so  well  as  some  foreign  na- 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

tion  would  rule  it,  but  following  the  principle  of  Lincoln,  be- 
lieving as  Lincoln  did  that  no  one  can  be  wise  enough  to  rule 
another  against  his  will  and,  to  carry  it  on,  that  no  one  nation 
is  wise  enough,  just  enough,  to  rule  another  nation  against 
its  will;  believing  that,  then  there  stands  forth  a  new  map 
under  this  new  heaven  and  on  this  new  earth.  There  stands 
the  justice,  the  justice  for  Ireland  as  well  as  for  Poland,  the 
justice  for  Finland,  for  Bohemia,  for  these  various  lands 
that  have  strangely  been  able  to  keep  the  principle  of  na- 
tionality alive,  that  have  kept  that  Promethean  fire  that 
would  not  die,  that  would  not  become  cold  ashes  but  was 
always  burning,  burning,  burning. 

In  that  great  day  we  shall  be  able  to  look  back  and  see 
that  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  have  had  their  distinguished 
))art.  What  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  our  fraternity.? 
It  is  service.  What  was  it  that  these  young  men  at  Williams- 
burg wrote  into  their  constitution?  Wliat  are  those  three 
stars  to  which  we  point  upon  our  key?  Friendship,  moral- 
ity, culture,  language,  literature,  whatever  you  please. 
And,  just  as  through  time  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  hav? 
been  the  foremost  in  throwing  themselves  wherever  they 
were  most  needed,  so  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men  to-day,  what- 
ever their  age,  whatever  their  opportunity,  are  doing  their 
part. 

I  take  now  the  statistics;  at  Amherst  as  my  own  college. 
What  do  I  find?  That  the  proportion  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  men  who  rushed  in  1861  to  save  the  Union  was 
something  like  two  to  one  as  compared  with  those  gentlemen 
who  were  not  members  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  And  of 
those  who  wore  the  general's  stars  and  the  insignia  of  office 
when  the  war  was  done  I  think  from  Amherst  everyone  of 
our  few  generals  and  all  of  our  many  colonels  except  two  were 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  men.  *  *  *  *  All  through  the  East  you  will 
find  stones,  circular  stones,  flat  stones;  and  on  these  stones 
will  be  names,  Nelos,  Nicodemus,  and  so  on ;  simply  a  name ; 

64 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

a  dead  stone  and  a  dead  name.  What  do  you  know  about 
these  people?  Nothing.  Just  a  name.  They  did  something. 
We  don't  know  what.  The  name  was  inscribed  there.  In 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  thirty-two  thousand  men  and  women  arc 
not  simply  a  collection  of  such  stones  as  that.  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  is  vital ;  it  is  effective ;  and  in  it  are  concentrated  all 
those  spirits  that  combine  to  redeem  the  world.  (Applause.) 

Dr.  Duane  :  So  long  as  Phi  Beta  Kappa  holds  to  the  prin- 
ciples that  Doctor  Grosvenor  has  so  eloquently  enunciated, 
so  long  will  Phi  Beta  Kappa  endure.  That  it  will  hold  to 
them,  who  can  doubt?  And  when  our  next  centennial  comes, 
we  shall  not  be  there;  but  others  will  be  there  to  celebrate 
in  the  spirit  in  which  we  are  celebrating  here  to-night. 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  declare  the  ceremonies  finished. 


■m^m 


65 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA 

SONG  TO  OLD  UNION 
Air :  Sparkling  and  Bright 

Let  the  Grecian  dream  of  his  sacred  stream 

And  sing  of  the  brave  adorning 
That  Phoebus  weaves  from  his  laurel  leaves 

At  the  golden  gates  of  morning; 
But  the  brook  that  bounds  through  Union's  grounds 

Gleams  bright  as  the  Delphic  water 
And  a  prise  as  fair  as  a  God  may  wear 

Is  a  dip  from  our  Alma  Mater. 

Chorus:      Then  here's  to  thee,  the  brave  and  free. 
Old  Union  smiling  o'er  us; 
And  for  many  a  day  as  thy  walls  grow  grey 
May  they  ring  with  thy  children's  chorus. 

Could  our  praises  throng  on  the  waves  of  song. 

Like  an  Orient  fleet  gem-bringing, 
We  would  bear  to  thee  the  Argosy 

And  crown  thee  with  pearls  of  singing. 
But  thy  smile  beams  down  beneath  a  crown 

Whose  glory  asks  no  other; 
We  gather  it  not  from  the  green  sea-grot — 

'Tis  the  love  we  bear  our  mother! 

Let  the  joy  that  falls  from  thy  dear  old  walls 

Unchanged  brave  Time's  on-darting 
And  our  only  tear  fall  once  a  year 

On  hands  that  clasp  ere  parting. 
And  when  other  throngs  shall  sing  thy  songs 

And  their  spell  once  more  hath  bound  us, 
Our  faded  hours  shall  revive  their  flowers 

And  the  past  shall  live  around  us. 

FiTz  Hugh  Ludlow,  '56. 


66 


CENTENARY  OF  ALPHA  OF  N.  Y. 

REUNION  ODE 

Air:  America 

Brothers!  We're  here  once  more — 
Not  as  in  days  of  yore, 

When  life  was  young. 
And  'mid  that  morning  light, 
Hope,  as  an  angel  bright. 
Before  our  raptured  sight 

Her  visions  hung. 

Home  of  our  early  thought! 
Where,  hand  in  hand,  we  sought 

Knowledge  and  truth. 
Receive  us  back  again. 
Coming,  as  care-worn  men, 
As  you  received  us  then 

In  early  youth. 

Some  are  not  with  us  here — 
Their  mem'ry  claims  a  tear — 

The  hallowed  dead! 
To  brighter  worlds  now  flown. 
Their  work  of  life  well  done. 
For  noble  thoughts  were  sown 

Ere  they  had  fled. 

Here  let  us  pledge  our  truth, 
As  erst  in  early  youth. 

Faithful  to  be! 
The  honored  name  we  bear. 
The  holy  trusts  we  share. 
Claim  that  we  do  and  dare 

All  manfully. 

A  higher  life  to  live, 
More  precious  gifts  to  give; 

This  is  our  part: 
That  when  our  work  is  done, 
And  we  the  prize  have  won. 
We,  like  the  setting  sun. 

May  hence  depart. 

» 

5*0  say  we  all  of  us, 
So  say  we  all  of  us. 

So  say  we  all; 
So  say  we  all  of  us. 
So  say  we  all  of  us, 
So  say  we  all  of  us, 

So  say  we  all. 

Henry  Phiup  Tappan,  '25 


67 


TERRACE  SONG 
Air :  A  Little  More  Cider 

Ye  Union  boys,  whose  pipes  are  lit, 

Come  forth  in  merry  throng; 
Upon  the  terrace  let  us  sit, 

And  cheer  our  hearts  with  song ; 
Old  Prcx  may  have  his  easy-chair — 

The  Czar  may  have  his  throne — 
Their  cushions  can  get  worse  for  zvear, 

But  not  our  seat  of  stone. 

This  grand  old  seat  of  stone. 
This  jolly  seat  of  stone. 
Then  here's  to  thee,  right  merrily, 
Thou  grand  old  seat  of  stone. 

'Twas  here  the  old  Alumni  sat 

On  balmy  nights  of  yore; 
And  many  voices  joined  in  chat, 

Whose  music  rings  no  more; 
From  many  a  lip  the  spirals  curled. 

But,  when  they  rolled  away, 
The  smoker  went  into  the  world. 

And  come  no  more  for  aye. 

But  thou,  old  seat  of  stone, 

Thou  jolly  seat  of  stone. 

The  changing  year  still  finds  thee  here, 

Thou  grand  old  seat  of  stone. 

And  when  we  all  shall  have  our  "Dips," 

In  shining  sheets  of  tin. 
Let  no  one,  with  irreverent  lips. 

Against  thee  dare  to  sin; 
A  cobbler's  bench — a  congress  seat — 

May  rest  our  trotters  yet. 
But  thou,  old  Terrace,  can't  be  beat 

By  any  we  shall  get. 

Thou  gay  old  seat  of  stone, 

Thou  dear  old  seat  of  stone, 

May  smoke  and  song  float  o'er  thee  long, 

Thou  grand  old  seat  of  stone! 

When  Captain  Jack,  has  seen  his  plants 

In  bloom  a  few  times  more. 
Some  boys,  who  sport  our  altered  pants. 

Will  knock  at  Union's  door', 
And  when  the  Tutes  have  let  them  in, 

Old  Terrace,  thou  shall  see 
Them  sitting  where  their  dads  have  been. 

And  singing  over  thee;  . 

For  thou,  old  seat  of  stone, 
Thou  dear  old  seat  of  stone — 
To- thee  shall  be  our  legacy 
Thou  grand  old  seat  of  stone. 

FiTz  Hugh  Ludlow,  '56. 


^imin^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


